Category: Art

#nicehashtag – Building a data-driven sculpture

Since early fall 2014 I’ve been working on a data-driven sculpture for HLN called “#nicehashtag” that is now installed in the CNN World Headquarters in here in Atlanta (if you take the Inside CNN tour you’ll see it outside Studio 7).

Programmable Hue bulbs change color to reflect realtime sentiment analysis of Twitter. The algorithm accesses Twitter every few seconds and pulls the most recent tweet into its program, determines whether the tweet is positive, neutral, or negative, then compares it to previous tweets and converts it into a percentage that it stores in memory. When that percentage reaches a certain threshold, the color changes.

digital signage
#nicehashtag digital signage explains the project and color coding for viewers.

My goal with this project was to consider how we use technology to interact with each other, and how that affects our emotional connections. Screens have enhanced and expanded our communication capabilities enormously, but there are still concerns about what it does to our ability to empathize with others. #nicehashtag is a physical representation of internet emotion, at least within the Twitterverse.

The challenge with any technologically-enhanced artwork is that the novelty of the tech will overpower the concept that (hopefully) supports it. Using tech in art just because it’s there is seductive but also dangerous for the above reason.

Here are some behind-the scenes pictures:

Making Things From Discards – Vintage Craft Book Inspires Hi-Tech Art – Part 1

To continue from my previous post, I’ve been working on artwork that explores the relationships between craft and art as viewed through modern technological tools, specifically 3D-scanning and -Printing, and what that means in terms of gender roles and identity.

I’m choosing vintage craft books and executing the “creative” projects they contain in step by step instructions, but substituting computers and digital production methods for scissors and glue. My first project comes from the book, Making Things From Discards by Hazel Pearson Williams, first published in the mid-1960s.

Making Things From Discards

The book was targeted toward “housewives,” and indeed the introduction page is rife with outdated attitudes toward labor and gender roles, placing an excess of leisure time as a primary obstacle to be overcome through craftwork.

Introduction PageThis got me thinking about what type of craft is socially acceptable for each gender to assume as their leisure work, both then and now. How have these attitudes changed, or have they?

In the mid- to late-20th century, women, as this book illustrates, can be seen to acceptably occupy themselves with what to me seems like “soft” craft: sewing, knitting, scrapbooking, floral arranging, etc. While men are confined to “hard” craft: woodworking, metalsmithing, automotive repair, etc. Women decorate; men build. These social attitudes are built upon the notion that women are somehow less than men, inherently. For a man to perform a woman’s craft or work is seen as being “unmanly,” and confers a lesser status upon that man (again according to prevailing social mores). Conversely, women are seen to be physically less able to perform “hard” craft, due to their apparently delicate nature, lack of physical strength, or some other such justification. While some work does indeed require a certain amount of strength to perform, and may eliminate some less-strong women from performing, that work would also eliminate less-strong men, and shows that cultural, not physical forces, are at work.

Moving into the modern era (though not limited to it) I see less of a gender binary in many areas, but ones that seem to hang on are those associated with STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields, which are still predominantly male. In my research into 3D printing and scanning, the vast majority of makers and tinkers are male. Being a male myself I seem to fall into this demographic as well, though I don’t ascribe to any belief that women are less in any way, nor that doing traditional “women’s” work somehow lessens my or anyone else’s status.

For the purposes of making this art, I’ll assume the role of a man creating craft intended for 1960s women using technology intended for everyone but still dominated by men. I’ll follow the instructions in the above craft book (the paradox of being creative by following exact instructions is also something I’m exploring) starting with the traditional material, in this case foam egg cartons and meat trays, but I’ll import those materials into the computer using a 3D scanner, then manipulate those “raw” materials in a 3D modeling program to execute the steps prescribed in the book, ultimately 3D printing the result.

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Eventually, I’ll create something (hopefully) as wonderful as this egg-carton peacock, shown above. I’ll make something a little less complex to start, like a daffodil flower.

IMG_6054Now that I have my project, I started by experimenting with ways to scan my egg carton using an Xbox Kinect sensor, below I tried hanging it from filament line.

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Here, you can see the raw scanning data when I had the carton on a table. Green is good scan data, red is bad data. Egg Carton 3D-Scan Data.

And here is one of the first final models 3D-Scanned Egg Carton Mesh.

Next step is building the flower!

 

Tech for Artists First Project – Egg-Carton Peacock

With the goal of bringing interdisciplinary, data-driven tools to artists, my first step is to learn the tech myself and to create proof-of-concept artworks as demonstration examples, and then lead workshops for interested artist students about how they can use these tools in their own artistic practice.

Project 1: Agisoft Photoscan

My first tech exploration is the process of 3D photometric scanning using Agisoft Photoscan, and then 3D print a sculpture based on manipulations of that scan. I thought this would be a good transition tech for artists since it is so visual and deals with real-world applications where big-data and similar tech seem abstract and untouchable (at first).

My first artwork will conceptually explore how 3D printing and scanning fit into the art/craft dialectic and how gender roles are defined. Traditionally, “craft” has been assigned primarily to the female gender, especially decorative and soft-material crafts like embroidering or floral arranging. Men have engendered hard craft, using materials like wood and metal that have practical uses. With the advent of at-home production using complex and technical 3D printers, men have traditionally dominated the genre for whatever reason. Now, in a role reversal, 3D printers on the consumer level are overwhelmingly known to create either parts for building and engineering, or decorative trinkets and gadgets.

Using a craftbook from the 1970s written specifically for “housewives with leisure time,” I’ll recreate one of the projects using new technology. Specifically, I’ll 3D scan a foam egg carton, then in the computer attempt to use the virtual modeling tools as if they were real-world tools to follow the steps in the book to create a decorative peacock. The result will be 3D printed and highlight the mutations that occur from multiple role transpositions and translations.

Future posts will outline the process.

3-d printed sculpture by Nathan Sharratt, 3d scanned with an Xbox Kinect sensor.

Giving Artists New Tools Through Science And Technology

Building connections between seemingly disparate areas is one of the joys of being an artist. It’s also one of the biggest challenges. Conceptually, artists are trained (or train themselves) to look at topics from multiple angles and to build relationships that express the nuances of the proverbial “human condition” (one of my least-favorite artspeak terms, though it seems appropriate in this context). We take input from the world around us, process it through the lense of our personal experiences and knowledge, then spit it out in some novel way as artwork.

Art schools are generally pretty good at giving artists artistic tools, but the focus tends to be on traditional art-making practice and thinking. Even new-media programs seem to focus on accepted art and design technology, such as Adobe Photoshop and the like. But what happens when an artist wants to expand their research into scientific fields, or access big data? The tools are out there, but the learning curve is so steep as to be seen as insurmountable. I’ve heard from multiple artists that they’d love to access primary sources of information, but dont know how or where to look. Consequently they end up relying on possibly inaccurate second- or third-hand information, with the caveat that it’s okay because it’s art, not science. To a certain extent that’s true: (probably) no one’s going to die if an artist uses bad or incomplete data. However, art can expose and educate us to experience and information in ways that no spreadsheet could, and it connects us to each other by making us aware of perspectives that may differ from our own.

Here at GSU, the art program exists under the umbrella of the School of Arts & Sciences, but there is rarely any overlap unless an individual student wants to take an elective class or slog through the paperwork and approval process for more detailed extra-departmental collaboration. But then the artist is limited to the schedule and interest level of their collaborator, who is busy with their own research and agenda. So it seems that the best way for the artist (aside from a team of dedicated collaborators) is to access the data themselves. It’s certainly possible, there’s a heckuvalot of data out there, and the scientists seem to have no issue accessing it, with tools and technology dedicated to specialized information tasks.

But where does the artist start who wants to consider census data from 1792 with geographical markers? How do scientists make those beautiful infographics that correlate environmental legislation with global warming trends? How do I use ArcGIS or Google Earth in my artwork? How do you make abstract animations in Processing that interact with viewers based on body movement? How do 3d scanners work, and how can I use those scans to create artwork? What type of 3d scanning should I use for a particular project? Is 3d-printing technology useful for art yet?

As a SIF, I’d like to begin to bridge these gaps by collaborating with SIFs from geostudies, archaeology, computer science and elsewhere to create artworks using their technology and information tools. Once prototype projects have been completed, I’ll present the documented process used to achieve the results to artists who are interested.

3D Printing and the Art/Kitsch Divide

That the debate over the art/kitsch divide has been theorized since at leat the 1930s shows that the supposed divide is arbitrary and the argument then breaks down into relativism. Like industrial culture production, the argument itself is of itself. To exist, it must already belong to the existing argument, otherwise it has no historical reference and the argument collapses. Unlike craft, kitsch cannot be defined by the intent of its creator. It is an outward-inward categorization that ignores embedded meaning planted by the creator. It is instead demarcated by an outside observer, who judges it to have no “pure” cultural value. Whether this is due to funcionality, quantity, or aesthetics, the judge claims it lacking in qualities needed to elevate it into true art. In modern times, the art/not art battle rages on through technology-based art.

The industrialization of culture, specifically post-war culture, wherein normative benchmarks measure the acceptable deviation range allow for new correlaries through technology. What once was mass-produced physically on assembly lines is now (theoretically) endlessly able to reproduce itself through digital copies. This includes pixel-based images as well as digital-physical production methods, such as 3D printing. In the mid-20th century, artists avoided the production of kitsch, but since artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst began to break the normative benchmark by intentionally producing “non art,” the range of acceptable mutation has grown almost to the point of meaninglessness.

3D-printed art relies almost entirely on the intent of the creator to define it as pure art and not kitsch. Most 3D-printed objects could be defined as kitsch in that they are representations of mass culture intended to be easily digestible and not require difficult thought to comprehend: to which thousands or perhaps millions of almost-identical 3D-printed Yoda busts can attribute. When peasants are able to download a digital model of artwork and reproduce it at home to near-exact tolerances, the distance between art and kitsch begins to narrow. That gap again narrows when considered against the previous need to be educated to understand or have access to pure art: 3D printing requres a degree of education and technical know-how previously thought unavailable to or lacking in presence among the kitsch-consuming peasants (as Clement Greenberg calls the public-at-large). Now, peasants can produce their own (low) culture.

3d printing now encompasses many of the struggles that existed with another formerly-new culture system: photography. Where is the value in a photograph if it can just be reprinted? The same argument applies to 3d printing. Through the years artist photographers have (mostly) sidestepped this issue through ideological cosensus and the forced scarcity of producing a limited number of physical prints. The art world considers a photograph art through comparison to various normative benchmarks, such as technical skill and content. However, the desire to succinctly categorize photography as art or not again breaks down to relativism when considered alongside non-art photographs that meet the same criteria. 3D-printed objects face similar challenges that artists are still trying to solve.

Due to its newness, artists are applying various techniques to force value onto their culture objects. Some follow suit with photographers and promise to make only a limited number of duplicates, or even unique objects. Others are considering the by-hand post-processing of 3d-printed objects to transform a replicable object into a unique one. Others still are using 3d-printed objects in mixed-media works as a single element among others. In this sense, the 3d-printed object piggybacks onto previously-accepted benchmarks for acceptable pure art.

So is 3d-printed culture art or kitsch? The answer denies binary simplification, and in my opinion relies on multiple factors much like other pure artforms that have low-art counterparts. However the prevailing benchmark seems to be consensus. Like the famous judicial argument defining pornography, “I know it when I see it.”