Nothing - Final Prototyping

High-level Description:

Breaking the walls between two spaces, either culturally and/or physically, to explore nonverbal communication through gestures, signals and actions.

Detailed Description:

We are exploring communication between two people who are sharing a simulated table, but occupying two different spaces. How do they unintentionally influence the other’s experience when they can’t speak and may not be able to see and hear the results themselves? We’ll project each person into the space of the other, creating the illusion of a complete round table while in actuality keeping them separate and creating a speech barrier. Through the use of the kinect (and possibly specific object triggers) we will be tracking their gestures and actions to use as triggers for sound and light changes in the other room. We will not tell them ahead of time the effects of their gestures, and they will be able to explore the space and attempt to interact with the other person sharing their table.

Group: Lindsey Daniels, Chris Hall, Akmyrat Tuyliyev

Location: Meeting Room (room reservation requested) + Micro Studio (waiting on ability of booking)

Prototyping:

We started working this weekend to see if we can portray an individual sitting at the same table as you through the illusion of projection.  We are thinking of making the table a circular one that we will build out of wood.

We just tapped out the what the table would look to to test the projection.

Using Isadora, we captured me at the one table and projected the capture at the second table location.

This week, we will start working with the Kinect 2 to track  the non-verbal gestures of the individuals.

Interactions to track:

Y- Movement

X-movement

z-movement

1. Arms in same plane- nothing happening
2. arm and hand at 90 degrees
3. Hand with fist - unfriendly sound
4. Hand waving - friendly sound
5. Hand touching face
6. Hands touching wall- dimming light
7. Side to side body movement / lean- changes color
8. Hand on chin- crickets
9. Object movement- songs played
10. Two hands up- applause
11. Hands coming together/clap-
12. Smiling
13. Other simple facial gestures

Kinect Tutorial for reference:

http://pterneas.com/2014/01/27/implementing-kinect-gestures/

Equipment/Props needed for installation:

2 sets of Speakers

2 Kinect 2s

2 big projectors

6 speed rails /table legs

2 hue bulbs & bridge

2 MSIs (can be the thin ones)

2 webcams

Lamps for both room

Plant

2 table cloths

Table tops

Nothing: Final Proposal

I am working with Lindsey D and Akmyrat to play with the concepts of walls and barriers between individuals and how we can start to bring down those barriers and build connections through non-verbal interactions. We are hoping to create a scene where an individual sits at a table and the another individual joins them. However, the other individual will not physically be in the room. Rather, they will have a similar set up in another room and we will be projecting the individual from the one room into the first room and creating the illusion that the individual is at the same table.

Here is a sketch fab visual created by Akmyrat to demonstrate the scene:

Nothing: Illusions installation proposal by Akmyrat Tuyliyev on Sketchfab

The individual in the scene with the blue table would be the one that is actually physically in the room while the other parts of the table would be projected onto the wall.

We want to work with the concept that if you do different gestures, it changes the space in the other quardant

Response || Justification of Putting the Audience Through a Difficult Evening

Aunt Dan & Lemon

Justification of Putting the Audience Through a Difficult Evening

Written by Wallace Shawn

Wallace speaks about creating a theatre piece, called Aunt Dan and Lemon, where difficult questions are asked, contradictions are visited, and sometime the lie is the result in the story.  This can leave the audience without a comfortable resolution in the end. Why does he tell his stories this way? Because a comfortable resolutions isn't the way our lives usually play out outside the theatre.  He wants to challenge the thought process of the audience goer by sending them home with more questions than they arrived with, that they can only look inward to find the answer.

To me this is real art.  It causes the viewer to really think.  To re-evaluate their livelihood and lifestyle and maybe make a change for the better.

It's very important to always be reflecting on your perspective on a topic and try to self-examine as to where your perspective may have come from.  Is your perspective something that you just acquired through your friends, community, or from news and social media? Or is this something that you've analyzed, researched and come to your own conclusion as a result.

Wallace was asking himself how he, as "...a superficial American, nurtured in the citadel of privilege, sheltered from the winds of history...", has the right to write about such things. At times I struggle with this exact thought when trying to create my own work.  One quote that I thought was really helpful here was when he stated, "anyone has the right to think or speak about them [these subjects], because it's in fact impossible to say in advance whose contributions might be of value-- just as it's impossible to predict which of the 12 jurors in the jury will...point out some crucial bit of evidence that no one else had noticed." I think that as much as I admire what Wallace is saying here, I feel like it can be hard to approach particular topics from this perspective as not everyone is on the same page, culturally, politically, etc.

At the end of the essay he talks about the importance of changing our behavior and the attitudes behind our behavior.   If that means putting the audience through a difficult evening, that sparks an internal self-examination, then I feel like it's a great thing he's doing.

Response || Whitney Biennial

I didn't do any previous research about the exhibition before going to the Whitney because I didn't want to have any predisposed ideas of how I might feel about the work or topics addressed. First I have to say, that I was really blown away by this entire exhibit. This was my first Biennial, of the 78 that have been installed.  I didn't realize that these exhibitions focused around critical discussions around contemporary art with a deep focus on cultural concerns of the given historical moment.  This was a very impactful exhibition for me considering the current political climate.

This Biennial arrives at a time rife with racial tensions, economic inequalities, and polarizing politics, and many works in the exhibition challenge is to consider how these realities affect our senses of self community.

This exhibition did just that for me--- I reflected and took pause on how I felt about my initial thoughts on the subjects that were addressed.

Particular pieces that resonated with me

Cauleen Smith

I really enjoyed walking into the lobby of the Whitney and experiencing the protesting banners hung against state-sanctioned  anti-Black violence. I feel like these were very important pieces for all to see.  I think that possibly they should have been lower from the ceiling and they might have had a greater impact.  So that they were more in your face.

Real Violence (2017) - Jordan Wolfson

This installation was presented in a VR headset.  Since I am interested in this medium, I immediately got in line for the VR experience, not knowing what the piece was about.  I noticed the people that had taken off their headsets were not often eager to chat with their friends about what they saw, which I found this odd.  I waited only about 5 minutes to be able to view the piece.  Once I put it on, the VR experience was only about 2 minutes long, but it felt a lot longer than that.  It's described as, " the viewer is transported to a nondescript urban street where a brutal assault occurs".  In the middle of a bright and sunny day, one man beats another man very aggressively with a baseball bat.  Once the victim falls to the ground, the assaulter continues to stomp on and hit his head with the baseball bat.  The attack was created in a game engine like Unity or Unreal Engine, but that didn't make it feel any less real. The beauty with VR is that you are able to look around in 360 view and because this assault was so hard to watch, I found myself looking in all directions I had access to.  I didn't even notice, but read later, that the victim maintains eye contact with you. "His constant gaze rendering the viewer both spectator and victim."  At times I found myself looking away at the cars as they drove by wondering why they weren't stoping to help. This piece really made me reflect on the Bystander Effect which refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present because they assume others will help.

Henry Taylor and his pieces on Black Identity in America were very powerful. Especially his piece, The Times They Ain't a Changing Fast Enough, where he depicts the unarmed Philando Castile in his car shot by the Minnesota Police Officer.  I think the title of this piece is very poignant and says a lot about where we are today with racial inequalities.

Kaari Upton

I found her pieces very interesting, and her reasoning for creating them even more so. Bodhidharma (2014) "were flaccid forms of furniture suggest at once an interior and exterior of the human body... Sagging against the walls or hanging loosely on them, the objects lose their identity and original purpose, taking on a state that is both abstract and visceral." There were a couple of quotes from the artist that really stuck out at me:

When something is outside the body it becomes disgusting, but when it's inside it's as natural as blood

These pieces from our home that are put to the sidewalk and discarded

People have to project the other outside of them and create hate, and the fact is that the other is inside

Dana Shultz

It is interesting that there have been protests to one of her paintings the depicts the mutilated body of Emmett Till, the teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955.  The protests were as a result that Dana is a white female painting about race and violence.  The full story of the protest was covered by New York Times. The artist's response was the following: “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. Their pain is your pain. My engagement with this image was through empathy with his mother.” She added: “Art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection. I don’t believe that people can ever really know what it is like to be someone else (I will never know the fear that black parents may have) but neither are we all completely unknowable.” For myself, I am constantly trying to learn to be a good ally. This was an interesting situation to take pause on because sometimes good intensions are not always taken the way the were intended.

Response- Einstein's Dreams

Section 4 (28 June 1905 & Epilogue)

At the beginning of this passage, the author eludes to the concept of enjoying the present moment as a child and adult, together at the same moment in the story: a similar experience-- awake and happy.  Then the next moment the adult has sprung from the present in the attempt to freeze the moment of time so that they can enjoy it longer.  In comparison in the child's mind, they yearn to grow up as fast as possible to experience the next thing.  As a child, we yearn to grow to the age when we can really live and experience life; as an adult, we feel that life passes us too quickly and we only wish that it would slow down so that we can appreciate it more. Where is that delicate balance where we can just be happy with the moment we are currently present in and are not looking to the future or reminiscing the past? Is there an age where the scales tip from one want to the other?

Throughout the novel of Einstein's Dreams, during the sections that talks about the specific experiences that Einstein went through, Einstein seemed to always be so busy with his work.  Always entangled in his mind and thoughts. Never truly present.  In the last Epilogue, Einstein had finished the mathematical model, his newly developed theory, that he had worked on for some time. As he handed the handwritten notes to the individual that would type out the document, it was the first time that he describes the feeling of being "empty." He is truly in that moment observing the birds flying above the alps. He doesn't yearn to correct his calculation or adjust his thought process.  He is in that moment, not in the past or thinking about the future.

This left me thinking about how often in his lifetime he was able to achieve that 'truly present' moment in time.

What an incredible journey this entire book was.  If you haven't read the entirety of Einstein's Dreams, I would certainly encourage it!