The new Ideas

here i am with my new ideas on my sketchbook.(that i try now to put on the blog)

recently i have looked deep into cybersociety and cyberculture,cyberpunk and i found few interesting loots books about it in the library, but even more then anythink the jounals on-line have been really helpfull.

I'm looking lot into the biomechanoids of Giger, and other integration, human machine describe in book of cyberpunk, as well as Stelarc and his combination body-machines

the question that i left before Xmas still over there, and partially they sill unresolved...

how to criticize the future digital culture and the abuse of technology??

how to make art in within the digital media to critisize the media itself??

i need to upload my proposal for whom havent really read it)

im now working at 3 differents and separets way.

1st IDEA: are paintings in the street (street-art) that i have started to experiment, in my idea this were distortions of a drawing to make look from a front point of view, really elongating in the side, and for a really angolate point of view the seems proportionated. I was thing now to drawing this posters at home and them stick them into the street to see how thwy look like, but using the projector to distort'em haven't rally worked. so next step is taking the drawing that I'm doing, scan them and then print them on long piece of paper to then stick them in the street.

2nd IDEA: I am gardening old computers!!! or better i still need to find old computers to do that, but i want to integrate few computers with plants, as an installation, and make them grow into the computer while the computer is working, and at the same time make the computer work. im try to explore this parallel between nature and machine. trying to make the point of my critic on an installation that combines this two together. So far is still just an idea, and just sketches on my Notebook, so i need to undestand how it will be possible. but soon i may be able to far lots of baby computers by planting them, integrate nice plants and motherboards and all sort of thinks like that...

3rd IDEA: the last idea is the first one that was in my mind at the beginning, doing some illustration of futuristics dystopya of our world if the continous abuse of enviroment, comunication will trasform human being into creature that just sitt in fron of the computer in the dark of their room.

i still just on the sketch phase of this illustrations, trying to undestand which kind of subject I will put inside the illustrations, and if I want them to become more tridimentional and integrate them with other object to create more an installation rather that a normal illustration.

this are so far the lasts thoughts and ideas that I am working on...

lets see where this ideas will lead me, bur if i grow a tomato/RAM memory, someone wants to come come to mine and have a salad with me???????

Stef

Assessment

Assessment for the first unit: Introduction, planning, research


The incipit (September_07)

When I subscribed this MA things seemed to be easy and straight forward. But not always things are what they look like. I was confident that after finishing a BA with a discreet result and a good dissertation my abilities were enough to start an MA in perfect control… but probably I was a bit too confident…

The First project (October_07)

My first idea and proposal for the Master was relate excursively with the visual arts, especially the VJ practice. During the past summer I had been impressed so much by visual shows during concerts. The visuals used in the concerts were wonderful. The nature of the images used were absolutely various, their were involving Visual art, Animation, real footage, Illustration. Because I am familiar with all this media, ideas started to floating in my head.

When I started my research my ideas were clear: create an innovative interface to enable VJs to be free of movement around the stage, rather that be relegated behind a desk.

I started reading the bibles of digital art, visual art, and VJ (like the D-FUSE book) and the things were going quite well, I was quite confident that I was pointing in the right direction. I found that most useful was the primary research that I conducted into the field of VJ. I went into clubs during October where I knew that were having some VJs show on and asked to speak with them, or just straight go and ask them some questions. I had the luck to end up speaking with few artists in venues, especially in the Synergy Project (http://www.thesynergyproject.org/) and other Art-space called the ‘Shunt’. Especially the Chat I had with this guy called Steve revealed things that I was not able to see before. The field that I was looking at was not what I was considering be. My idea was good but the field that I was looking at was huge, complicated and really, really technical. But the hundreds of meters of cables connecting their devices were not making any sense to me. In my imagination the VJ world was involving lot of animation, drawing and scanning bits and pieces. But it was not entirely like that.

Depression and confusion (end of October_07)

I spent at least a couple of weeks in a mental confusion thinking at what was the right choice to do. I Was not convinced anymore, not thinking that was the right think to do for my career. I tried to force myself to keep in the same direction, but my body and my brain were not responding at all. Few times I found myself reading chapters without be able to make any sense of what just red, or even worse, staring at the wall for hours.

I was in panic, I didn’t know what to do. After speaking with a close fired of mine, I came to the conclusion that the best things to do was probably doing a step backward and maybe considering to change the proposal for the piece of research. Soon I went to speak with my tutor Andrew and he advice me on what was the best solution to take.

The plan sounded simple: deconstruct my practice, my interest and my old project and reconstruct on top of that. Making sure this time that it would be the right choice.

Action!! (First weeks Nember_07)

The same day of my tutorial I went straight to the library and started sketching my thoughts and research into my beliefs. I began to braking down the problem into pieces and the same for my practice and my passion. First reason that appear was the fact that I wanted to turn my career more into the art side of digital media, away from the boundaries of digital design. I also began raking apart the subject areas of my interests. The VJ idea came along because I thought about combining together my different skills with different media all together, but in a more creative and free way. Especially free form the four walls of a graphic design studio. I underlined the more important ones: Illustration, drawing, video and my passion of music/dance as ‘core’ part of my previous project (fig:1 & 2). The Digital media stayed on top as a constant factor of my art practice. After hours of sketching ideas, drawing I realise my constant concern for the ‘concept part’ of all these practices. The generation of ‘ideas’ it is always the part that I preferred of all my jobs and that working in ‘concept design’ for movies and videogames was one of my aim for the future.(Fig:1)

Planning (November_07)

My relationship with technology is other think that it always appear to be important for my working practice. I have a love-hate for all the technologies, computer based programs and digital media. Cyberspace, cyber-society and post-humanism came out to be the core subject of what naturally I am concern about. This is relate about my anxiety about the future of our society, and where our society is going to be in the next future. I found really useful a book called ‘Clicking In’, a collections of essays edited by L.H. Leeson. This book offered me a broad view of the digital age. I found lots of different views and opinions about our society and about the cyberspace, like for example in the D. Bell book ‘An Introduction to Cybercultures’. (fig: 3)

So few new points came out on my sketchbook: the concept of ‘Reality and VR’, the future, the future of Cybersociety, Concept art, concept design, and the body (derivation form my dance practice). Lied out all this parts I started thinking the way that I should combine all this things together. I actually realized that I was suddenly having a good new starting point because all this bits were matching together quite well already. From every of this points I started derivate ideas and concepts. After sessions of brainstorming, reading and looking at other people work (especially, sci-fi artists), I came out with a sort of logical path for my studies.

The Future of the Project (December_07)

The late tendency of the detachment form the ‘body’ and the ‘Real’ is the most important into Cybercultures. We are loosing the sense of ‘face-to-face’ communication giving more and more importance to the computer interaction. With my skills of digital illustration, video I want to use the digital media to criticise the abuse of the digital tool and the loss of the ‘real’.(fig:6)
Use the media to criticise the media itself, like Dadaism did.
I want to offer a sort of ‘visions’ of the future into an installation where I could make the people think about our society and the problem of it, our future, and our mistakes. It helped me lot magazine and books like ‘Mondo 2000’, Imagine FX, and other portals of concept design (like conceptdesing.org). But rather that using just the media of digital painting, like most of concept designer, sci-fi artist do, my aim is using more that one media. Express my fear and my vision of the dystopia that could be our future if we are not careful about how we use the technological tool. Where one day instead of be us to use the machines as tool we might be in the position of being use by the machines as tools.(fig:6)

For the moment I am still looking for artist that combine multimedia to express visions of the future in a dystrophic way. I still looking at sci-fi artist, reading Cybercultures books and going though cyber-punk prediction of our future. I am looking forward now to going further on my research, discovering myself and my practice and creating art as the result of this path.

Finally i done my blog,

hi guys!!! hallo to everyone that have the time to klick on my blog...

soon i will start posting my material, so you can give me some feedback.
i had a bit of a moment, i have been a bit a mess and all my ideas seemed to collapse,
so i do apologise if i haven't being that present but i'm on the way to be better.
Sometimes is hard, working, studing and try to be creative, probabily you undestand.
Hope to see you soon at school guys.

ciao!
Stef

Finalmente!!