David / DTC 355 Multimedia Authoring

This cover by Al Jarreau strongly reminds me of Reggie Watts. I'd really like to know if Reggie was influenced by him. I can't see how he couldn't be. I love how Jarreau introduces the song, both verbally and musically, and I can see this as another possible influence on Reggie. On a similar note, Dutch rock band Focus released Hocus Pocus in 1970, which showcases similar verbal gymnastics.

This Axios article  talks about human rights vis-à-vis technology and artificial intelligence. "Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI," which confronts exhibition goers with powerful images of data monetization, algorithmic bias and the loss of humanity, opens this week at the de Young Museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Trevor Paglen's "They Took the Faces from the Accused and the Dead" consists of hundreds of faces used to train an artificial intelligence engine, all without any of the subjects' consent. "What we are looking at here is dirty data," curator Claudia Schmuckli said.

Today I learned about Rockbox , a free firmware replacement for 'obsolete' mp3 players. You can even run Doom or Wolfenstein 3D! This is a perfect way to upcycle and repurpose these old devices you no longer use.

Today I learned about the Jefferson Bible , which Thomas Jefferson created by literally cutting and pasting (with a razor and glue) the moral teachings of the Bible. ( PDF ) From Wikipedia: The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the traditional Christianity of his era. Throughout his life, Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, religious studies, and morality. Jefferson was most comfortable with Deism, rational religion, and Unitarianism. Consistent with his naturalistic outlook and intent, most supernatural events are not included in Jefferson's heavily edited compilation. Even when this took some rather careful cutting with scissors or razor, Jefferson managed to maintain Jesus' role as a great moral teacher, not as a shaman or faith healer.  "I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as...

Today I learned about Studio NAND , which "mak[es] data and technology inspiring and usable." Anyone Still Working Here ? examines the future world of work vis-à-vis robotics. Studio NAND investigates the relationship between humans and robots and attempts to create some understanding in humans for how robotics can improve their work, automating monotonous, precise, or dangerous tasks. The installation features the UR5 single-arm robot , which can be integrated into existing workflows. It can also work collaboratively alongside humans. Anyone Still Working Here? from Studio NAND on Vimeo .

Today I learned about using an oscilloscope to create animations from music. (O-scopes are typically used by engineers to perform diagnostics on electronics.) "The audio signal is fed directly into the oscilloscope, where vector graphics are drawn with sound," and "left/right audio channels trigger horizontal/vertical deflection of the cathode ray." If you don't have an oscilloscope, Austrian artists Hansi Raber and  Jerobeam Fenderson have created  software to turn your Mac or Linux box into one. Here's a cool one called "Shrooms": And here's an overview of the process. "You are looking at the sound you are hearing":

Time-lapse photo montage (2020) This collage is from a collection of family photos. Everyone is roughly in the same location as in the original photos, which range from the 1960s to today. The splintered radials capture the changing nature of identity over time.

Today I learned about randomart in ssh. It generates random ASCII art from ssh keys. Think old-skool BBS art generated with letters, numbers, and punctuation. SSH is a command-line utility for connecting to remote servers. It uses cryptographic keys to secure the connection so it can't be eavesdropped on by folks in the middle (using a network sniffer, for example). Anyway, ssh keys are long strings of characters, and they are easy to verify with a computer, but difficult for humans to verify visually. Changing even one character in a key makes it into a different key, and that would be hard for humans to detect easily and routinely. So, the authors of ssh, an Open Source tool, implemented a feature that generates a unique picture (but the same one every time for a specific key). If you regularly ssh to a server, it's anticipated that you'd notice any changes to that picture. The key fingerprint is: SHA256:o5lJ57gY1oUS+VIMP/KU7T5varCH+6Xsc+M0/BXyHUw HaX0r@shell The ke...

Today I learned about the SCP Foundation. Fascinating.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCP_Foundation SCP is a storytelling subculture in the vein of X-Files, Stranger Things, Darkhorse Comic's United States Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (Hellboy), and The Shape of Water. I remember an episode of X-Files that inspired a similar primal horror. I love how this art piece helped generate one of the stories for this subculture, and the artist gave them permission to use images of the piece.  http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-17 3 SCP-173 in containment

Today I learned about Brazilian art duo Bicicleta Sem Freio (Bicycle Without a Brake). They make incredible street art that is exploding with color.  Rob Wilkes describes their subjects as a " menagerie of anthropomorphic hipster-pimp animals, bejewelled dream girls, mysterious wizards, flora and fauna that spring up like a kaleidoscopic rainforest that renders everything around it drab in comparison."  BSF has art all over the world, and much of their amazing work is mind-blowing public murals.

You will be challenged to think differently: Garnet Hertz is an artist who practices Critical Making. This aesthetic examines how we interact in the physical world through technology and prompts us to question the nature of that relationship. View the presentation .

Today I learned about Brazil's 1920s art deco magazine Para Todos . Art deco is usually associated with U.S. and European urban centers, but, as the article suggests, this is likely due to our biases. Art deco had an established influence on the psychedelic aesthetic of the 1960s, and the trippy retro-futurism of some of these Brazilian pieces really appeals to me. (Warning: some racial caricatures present.)

I appreciate how Rush explains 20th century artists' repeated questioning of the inaccessibility of painting as art form. This extends to both the creation and appreciation of painted works, and works that include everyday objects "extend the content of the canvas beyond paint" (7) promote creation and appreciation of all art for everyone. While at first I was skeptical that this rebellion of sorts was even necessary, I can still detect in myself and others some resistance to the accessibility of painting. I grew up before the internet, but I used computers during and after high school to create art (digital drawings & zines). I've done very little actual painting and the barrier to entry seems steep to me. Will I even like it? Is this a moot point today for people with access to a computer? Probably not, because it's important to understand the evolution of art, and art from before this movement is still around. I wonder about artists who survived only at the...