Lot's has been happening with The Perfect Artist project. Arts Victoria were kind enough to fund the project, so we are off to Sydney at the end of February to shoot some portraits. I've been building edit suites, programming the installation software and putting up a dedicated website for the project which can be found at http://www.perfectartist.net. Check it out!
Circuit
Oct 05, 2009 at 07:52 PM
Circuit is currently (and simultaneously) showing at 8 independent and artist run initiatives across Victoria, including Allen's Walk (Bendigo), Arc Yinnar (Yinnar), Westspace, Seventh, Kings, Yarra Sculpture, Off the Kerb and Bus (Melbourne).
Each Circuit installation is unique. Whilst they all contain a webcamera, computer and projector, the sculptural object at each venue is completely different. Objects include a record cover, cd, book, newspaper, lanyard, billboard and laptop.
When a visitor approaches one of the booths, their face is detected. This triggers a photograph and a series of text and image downloads from websites relating to each of the sculptural 'products'. These are used to construct a personally tailored, semi-random, fake product projection.
All the photographs of visitors are also uploaded to a central server (using FTP) and then distributed back to the other venues. So each visitor not only sees themselves transformed into a product, but also several other products/visitors from other venues across Victoria.
Here are some images from Seventh, Kings, Yarra Sculpture, Allen's Walk and Off the Kerb galleries:
When visitors approach the booths their faces are detected, triggering a photograph, http downloads and a slideshow of previous visitors from some of the other venues.
The CD Cover is generated by searching Flickr for a recent interesting photo (the 'cd'), 10 random Wiki entries (the 'tracks') and a random quote (the 'album title').
The Self-Help book title is generated by searching Amazon for self-help books and then randomly splitting two titles at a colon (:) and putting them back together. And again the cover image is from Flickr (but this time from images tagged 'good textures').
The Newspaper is generated using a front page image from The Age from the last 31 days (Kiosko) and a Reuters search for 'terrorists' to create the headline and intro paragraph.
The Billboard slogan is generated by doing a Yahoo search for the word "Don't". Circuit uses Haar cascades to detect faces, and in the case of the Billboard also allows the "Don't" slogan to be positioned over the eyes, a la Barbara Kruger.
Visitor photographs are shared via server between all the venues.
Circuit Rolls on Out
Sep 17, 2009 at 08:46 PM
Circuit opens next week in 8 galleries across Melbourne and regional Victoria...so I'm busy in the lab. Here's some photos and below an excerpt from the catalogue essay.
OFFICIALLY:
Circuit is a project made for the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival, that brings together some of the most exciting young artists working with analogue and digital technologies, to create a unique interactive art project that spans eight independent and artist-run galleries across Victoria.
In this disposable Internet age of the iGeneration, personal technology is wrapped up in designer packaging and marketed to us as a vital and integral extension of our personal and professional selves.
Circuit playfully critiques personalised technologies and adaptive marketing strategies, which are often used to manipulate our desires – and wallets – into believing that some product, site or service has been tailored just for us. In particular the project examines cultural surveillance – the process of gathering information about cultural consumption, choices and inquiries – is often marketed back to us as personally beneficial, providing us with bespoke products to enrich or further our individuality.
The swift emergence of these interactive technologies now give us better searches, more relevant results, and personalised suggestions for other items of interest; the promise of iTunes Genius to ‘create perfect playlists’, Google cookies providing ‘more relevant results’, Amazon suggesting books we might like based on ‘customers who bought this item also bought…’ While these phenomena all demonstrate the ingenuity of technology, they also raise questions about incursions into privacy through the seemingly innocuous gathering of information (or data mining) of our cultural consumption.
Circuit responds to these issues through the creation of a custom-programmed interactive artwork by Matthew Gingold contained inside eight bespoke booths designed by Ben Milbourne. The work inside the booth combines the viewer’s portrait with randomly generated product information from the Internet and immediately projects this onto a sculptural consumer object by Nicole Breedon.
It is this random content shift, of not only the appearance of the work but of your own image, that reflects the context and meaning of supposedly personalised technologies. This is the critical entry point for us as consumers of ‘art product’.
Circuit itself is a simulacrum of everyday consumerism: the displacement of an ordinary consumer object wrapped in imitation designer packaging with the promise of a personalised experience. This inversion of conscious consumption allows us to question not only the nature of consumer objects and desire, but also the way they are sold to us in an attempt to redefine our sense of self.
As each of the eight Circuit booths has a slightly different internal appearance and functionality, this project allows you a unique experience with the work regardless of which venue you may be visiting, whether it’s in the CBD, the inner north, Bendigo or Yinnar. Circuit is also a perfect opportunity to explore other contemporary works on show in the participating galleries from Australian visual artists, and to experience first hand the tremendous talent and energy of our independent arts scene.
Hidden away inside the booths is a computer running custom made software, entirely built using open-source code libraries, in particular openFrameworks (openframeworks.cc) a c/c++ programming framework for media artists.
When visitors approach the booths, face detection software triggers a photo of the visitor and starts a series of Internet searches. These web searches (from common sources such as Google, Amazon, Seek, Wiki, Flickr, Quotationspage, etc.) are essentially ‘scrapping’ data off the web, providing the raw text and imagery used to create the projected product, or ‘skin’.
These skins are generated by using visual analysis to work out the size and colour of the images, and text manipulation algorithms to truncate and re-combine the text. These are then put through an iterative process of finding the ‘best’ geometric layout for the resulting words and imagery into the projected area of the sculptures.
UNNOFFICIALLY
Circuit will be cool ;-)
Erth Development
May 30, 2009 at 09:14 AM
Last week I spent three days with the Erth team developing and demonstrating some computer vision interactives. Using openFrameworks I prototyped three interactive demos all using a camera, projector and infra-red lighting in different ways. We were particularly interested in how these technologies could be used in the context of live performance in a variety of contexts: on the street, in a theatre, museum or library.
We checked out kicking and throwing "bricks" around (thanks must go to Todd Vanderlin for his OF version of Box2D and Delaunay for his version of colour the triangulation in a convex polygon):
In October/November 2009 I'll be going to Perth as the inaugural recipient of the Aphids Tactical Media Residency at CIA Studios. The residency was developed to provide a unique opportunity for a young or emerging artist working in tactical media, sound and/or cross artform practice. Artists were encouraged to propose a project or body of work which they would like to develop at CIA, or which they would expressly like peer-to-peer critical feedback on from CIA permanent resident companies pvi collective & Hydra Poesis.
Many thanks to Aphids, CIA, pvi and Hydra Poesis.
It's good to be inaugural.
The Aphids' Artist Tactical-Media Residency at CIA (Centre for Interdisciplinary Art) Studios was established with the support of the Sidney Myer Fund.
The Perfect Artist Pilot
Mar 19, 2009 at 05:46 PM
The Perfect Artist is a video portrait and performance project that explores the creative processes, cultural networks and social personalities of Australian artists, arts administrators and workers. Ultimately, audiences will encounter The Perfect Artist in a gallery or museum context, as a multi-screen projection installation. Consisting of between 100 and 250 individual portraits of creative people ‘performing themselves’, the installation will present audiences with an ever-changing ‘group’ portrait of inter-related individuals.
As part of the development of this project a 'pilot' was shot at HeadQuarters between March 11 and 15, 2009. During the 5 day shoot 24 portraits were created. Many thanks to the participants and those who wanted to participate but couldn't be fitted into the schedule. Rest assured we'll be shooting more portraits soon.
Below is a (very) rough edit of the 12 hours(!) of footage into a 12 min pilot showreel...a longer version is on its way.
Each participant was sent a list of generic items to bring (an item of personal hygiene, a song, something from the kitchen, an item of clothing/disguise, a travel memento, some reading material etc). None of the items were solicited and none of the ‘performances’ were pre-arranged. Each portrait took 1-2 hours.
This project was originally inspired by experimental documentary maker, Jørgen Leth’s, ‘The Perfect Human’ (1967) which explores the exquisite beauty and banality of everyday activities, from eating and walking through to dancing and sleeping. Entirely scripted and portrayed by ‘actors’ the work operates in a poetic, fictionalised documentary mode. Together with Lars von Trier’s (2003) challenge to Leth to remake his film with ‘Five Obstructions’, these films provide a unique departure point for investigating the role of the director, artistic freedom, creative processes and the tensions between documentary and fictional forms.
In particular they raise questions about authenticity, originality and creativity through the formulation and capitulation to arbitrary and systematic rules.
If you want to check out the Perfect Human, there are several edited 'versions' online - this is a good starting point (even if it is the english language dub).
Many thanks to Josh Burns (DOP/Lighting) for being there every minute of every portrait, Willoh S. Weiland (HeadQuarters) for fleshing out the idea and generally pushing it to happen, Dan Briggs (Clockwork Media) for the super-excellent lighting hire, Mike Hornblow & OpenChannel for the extra P2 cards & reader, and Christie Stott, Bill Buckley and Dario Vacirca for their ongoing support in all my technomotional times.
After
Jan 14, 2009 at 09:02 PM
Amongst numerous interviews, applications, house cleanings, video shoots, and content management system re-developments, we found the time to explode our hearts on the streets of melbourne. It's been a busy start to the year...and a nice return to performance. There's more info about 'after' here, and video coming soon, but in the meantime some mean pics:
Dance Collaboration
Jan 14, 2009 at 06:17 PM
Over the past week Brooke Amity Stamp and I have been collaborating on some dance on video experiments. It's been a great opportunity for us both to continue developing our (respective) filmic and movement based language/s. The process has largely been practical and experimental, with an emphasis on developing skills through the creation of content. These are a few stills from yesterdays shoot at Dance House and a very short (and conspicuously silent) test edit of footage shot at Lupa Arts (soon to be Head Quarters) shot last week.
In November last year Kelly Ryall and I premiered our audio-visual performance collaboration at Outpost (Horse Bizarre) and Electundra 2008 (Loop). Previously Kelly and I have worked on theatre show's together, and we thought it would be great to try out some more experimental live performance. Kelly used sounds created throughout the year from both theatre and musical contexts and re-mixed these in Ableton Live. I wrote my first openFrameworks HD VJ application (imMediate for want of a better working title), and used footage shot in Japan on the many train trips I took during my workshop/residency there in September 2008. Here's a little edited video of our performance:
After much work on the backend, content and layout, my new website is ready to go live. I'm still adding content - lot's of movies, pics and audio are on there way - so check back regularly over the next week to see more content from my folio. If you're having trouble viewing any content, please let me know by emailing me at
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