Wise words

"Art is boring. Art is the residue of curiosity" -Elaine Buckholtz, 2010

Flashlight reviewing site

This is an unbelievable resource! The internet is completely insane! There are people who are passionate about EVERYTHING and willing to help ANYONE!

http://flashlightreviews.com/reviews_index/reviews_index_led1watt.htm

My goodness. I just bought two flashlights, both with tight tight tight beams, based solely off these reviews, and they should both be perfect!

I'm excited!

This terrifies me

Octopus from steve morel aka ekion on Vimeo.

Chair me

UVA's latest

Light and sound that morph around the people approaching it. Reminds me of the other side of the window in one of the works by the artist Stephanie presented on (with projected misted mirrors).

http://www.youmightlikethis.com/2010/02/triptych-tuesday/

Marian Matta

I'm blown away.

Simply wonderful (ignore the curse)

http://www.fucking-windows.com/

Jon Banning

Whimsical series on cultural bureaucracies !

http://www.ignant.de/2010/02/24/bureaucratics-von-jan-banning/

Katrina Stefanovic

I've never seen landscapes like these. I know how to take them, but I don't know where she finds the land!

One fantastic quote.

"In 2030 they [the Japanese Space Agency] will capture solar energy in space and sends it to Earth via laser or microwave."

Full concept article: http://solarlighting-s.com/space-solar-power/

Wonderful concept. Don't watch the whole thing. I appreciate the realistic lighting on the musicians and "handheld" camera, or cinema verité, to lend an extra oomph of realism to the movie.

Neurosonics Live from Chris Cairns on Vimeo.

No. This one.

http://zedomax.com/blog/2010/01/25/optoma-pk301-pico-pocket-projector-hands-on-review/

Optoma PK301. Golden.

I'm torn though because these will only get better the longer I wait. And money is difficult. Much easier to search for competitions that give them out as prizes. I'll keep my eye open.

Pocket Projectors

I'm convinced that embedding one (or ten) of these in a smoke art piece could be phenomenal. This site seems a solid resource.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/new-pico-projectors.htm

If only i weren't so inept at electronics

I'd give this a shot.

Laser Mod - The funniest videos are a click away

Projector...On a cell phone?

Psychological Art Criticism

I've long been fascinated by the experience of having one's eyes opened for the first time and seeing or somehow perceiving the world in a new way -- and it sounds like you are too. You called this experience a "heightened visual acuity," I believe. Perhaps my background in psychology can shed some new light onto this wonderful phenomenon.

Our brains are predicting the future constantly. They are finely tuned machines to take in input and guess as to what might happen soon -- we've evolved this way so that we don't get eaten, so we can successfully interact with each other, and so we don't get lost in the world. But there's far more information in the world than a mere brain can process, so it takes shortcuts in the interest of efficiency. One type of shortcut is the reliance on a "schema". A schema is a set of information that we know about something. This is vague, so I'll use a concrete example. When we drive down a road every day and pass a large oak tree, our brains are processing huge amounts of data to help us not crash the car. And anything seen as non-essential to survival in that moment takes a back seat in our attention, and we fill in the blanks with a schema. So, we pay lots of attention to the road, the car in front, our own car, our movement etc., and the general world around us gets summed up in as little information as possible so that we don't have to waste cognition interpreting it. As a result, we'll throw a passing glance at the oak tree, then we'll look at the road and focus on driving. Instead of looking back at the tree later, we'll fill it in with a schema, which is a vague memory composite of all times we've seen trees by the road.

What does this mean? That we rarely ever actually see what's around us.

How does it pertain to "heightened visual acuity"? You're rewriting peoples' schemas.

When you light a tree with a giant swirl, all of a sudden the schema doesn't fit perception. The brian has never encountered a "tree by the road" that looked like this. So, for the first time in a long time, we're actually seeing the tree instead of a memory of the tree.

What happens the next time you see the tree? Your brain doesn't know what to expect -- even if the tree no longer has a giant swirl on it, your brain knows that the schema it used before is invalid in predicting the world. As a result, your brain pays more attention to the tree than ever before, because it's trying to re-encode a valid schema for it (given that the old one was proved invalid). This can feel like you are seeing it better, experiencing it more fully, or seeing it with new eyes. Your actual visual acuity isn't increasing at all -- you have a finite acuity that decreases with age -- but the subjective experience of perceiving has been changed when the schema was abused.

This is one way to look at your new nooks and crannies project too. You're showing people that their schemas are wrong -- that the cracks in between buildings are actually interesting because they're brighter than the facades! The schemas get thrown out or adjusted, and the next time the people see the buildings, even if they're unlit, they'll notice the nooks and crannies because they'll have a new schema that says "those bit are interesting too".

There are a bunch of psychological processes occurring here, but I think the notion of schemas is particularly relevant. I am an impishly curious person, and have found in psychology many answers to life's most puzzling questions, and that is why I love it so. Some people hate knowing the answers, and prefer to exist in a state of confused appreciation -- I find that an equally valid ideal to ascribe to! It just doesn't work for me. I want to know why.

One last note is that despite all I know about psychology, I find it difficult to work from there up to a piece that is fascinating and compelling. I can readily use psych to deconstruct and explain something I do or see, but it seems to be a one way road -- i can't do or see something based on what I know it will achieve. I'm not sure this is a bad thing -- because I'm not sure that I'd be compelled by a piece that I'd invented purely out of psychological processes to trigger the exact response I desired. There's something wonderful about a little bit of mystery that is crucial to art. So, I hope this explanation hasn't ruined the wonder of your nooks and crannies project for you, but rather opened your eyes to a wholly different way of conceptualizing it!

Project 2: Relaxation in a box

A celebration of incense and smoke squids. Smell the calm, see the calm, be the calm.

Project 1: The Mind's Eye

In this box is your mind's eye. Look between the arrows, and you will see it. Don't be shy, this is where you imagination lies.

Munny Robot

http://kronikle.kidrobot.com/light-artist-marcus-tremonto-makes-munny/

light cube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TnurSONjds&feature=related

Didgeridoo visualizer

The project's back on. Formalized art piece here I come.

need to buy the following part now to test out the lighting mechanism:

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/PressRoom/recipe4.html

oh electronics, you're so learnable and yet... i haven't.

Experience this

You look into a cardboard box that feels warm. It has traveled a long way and so have you. You both share this in common: you are here now.

Inside the box it is dark, quiet. You share that in common too. You’re standing in a softly lit colourless space holding this box. Play along, now.

You raise the box to your head. It is not very hefty, so must be empty. There is a hole cute in one side just big enough for you to see in with both eyes at once. You place the box against your face.

My piece has come together

Peering into eyes is an intense experience. Peering into your own can be chilling.

I invite you to see beyond the physical, and see something that doesn't exist.

I invite you to look not at your own eyes, but your mind's eye.

When you see an object with your face's eyes, it is physically there in front of you.

But when you imagine something with your mind's eye, where is it? The object doesn't exist; and neither does the light allowing you to see it.

Look at the middle of the mirror.

Wild Reading

That was a series of direct statements, which were very logically presented, yet entirely unsubstantiated. I'm a little unsure!

Some cool elements i noted:

1) We feel aware of being alive which makes us happy. We can't represent life in art because it's too big and dimensionless, but we can represent our happiness at being alive. I think this is what i'm going to be doing with my various pieces in this class -- representing my joy that we're alive and demonstrating trick that our brain and perceptual system used to keep us that way!

2) We are born as verbs rather than nouns. I love this, and it is never really explained but needs not be. We will change, and through living we represent potential for growth, more than form that changes. the only thing static in our lives is the fact of life. We are like a traffic jam that propagates endlessly even though its source is long-gone, and even though the individual cars that make it up change, the jam will continue to be, in a formless mass that nonetheless has form.

3) Things done by decision without inspiration will become undone. New Years Resolutions anyone? This is so true.

Further Ideas

I want to objectively portray a subjective perceptual experience. Saccades are one, the face dissolving one, being blind when you move your eye is one

Ideas for experimentation

grazing-angle light vs front 90º angle light on slightly rough material, revealing shape/form at grazing angle (cracks in concrete look like lightning)

seeing only the halo -- black on black with backlight

making 3d light trails (real sculptural light trails?)

project viewer's face onto a mannequin head

looking down giant tube; disorientation; seems longer than it is, lighted from end, sense of movement?

focusing through fingers with lens; using fingers as lens;

correlate what you see with not-you, giving yourself a new body part (head?) mirrors halfway down face in horizontal, and perpendicular to face a foot from face vertical. gives you two eyes;

see through an egg to the yolk/chicken inside with a very bright light from behind, and blacked out sides

seeing your eye squiggles

capturing the the tiny filtered-out movements of the eye, seeing saccades or microsaccades

I found him via youtube

Of all the strange places...

Bradley Pitts. Light and experiential artist. Made me see the world in a different way.

http://bradleypitts.info/

He's amazing. I will give a talk on him.

http://www.youtube.com/user/bmpitts

See only light

Light divorced from object is like a photo without subject -- see the invisible.