Farewell

This is my last post I will be conducting on the blog address, and I just wanted to take the time to thank Peter Christenson, our DTC professor, for what an amazing class we had, and I have always enjoyed taking classes with Peter. Thanks for everything, teaching me a lot more about Adobe products, and most importantly, a lot more about myself as an artist. I remember the very first DTC class I ever taken at WSU I told myself, "I am not an artist" and now look where I am at creating my own websites and starring in my own videos. I have learned an incredible about of information from Peter through education and as a person, and I hope to continue to stay in touch with him as my future endeavors blossom. Thank you for everything Peter!

My best wishes,
James Garza

Website Critique

Last week on Thursday was the day we finished and uploaded our Dreamweaver Website projects and presented them quickly to the class. I was able to get mine uploaded on time, and get some critique from some of my peers in class on Thursday. A couple things that was recommended to me was changing the font to become visibly on my different website pages, as well as having a maybe more distinct home page button instead of it being at the bottom of the page. Those are two well given errors that can be easy fixes next time I conduct a project like this one. I really enjoyed doing this project and with being only my second time working with Dreamweaver, I have definitely learned a lot more on how to efficiently utilize Dreamweaver.

Galois Field

The Galois Field is a computer-controlled light and sound installation that was named for mathematician Evariste Galois. Being inspired by Galois was an amazing attribute to bring such a dynamic panel of relief structure composed of 1,024 light fields in 16 different colors. Vladimir Bonacic created this project from 1969 to 1971 with the help of three generators interacting with other generators to control light and sound from four loud speakers and the use of a remote to the viewer. The entire composition of this audio-visual piece is incredible, consisting of over a million different visual patterns, 64 sound oscillators playing over a duration of a full day. That is just amazing.

Signal Lumineux

This 1958 project was conducted by a man named, Panayiotis "Takis" Vassilakis in London not too long after he took up sculpting. This self-taught artist started a 'Signals' series which would become one of the most influential projects he ever did. Four years in the making, Takis would sculpt together some tall, wiry metal objects, combined with found metal objects, making them responsive to even the slightest change in the surround environment including, gust or winds. So in doing so, Takis would also sometimes add lights or vibrating rods to make chimes as these sculptures swayed back and forth. The 'Signals' series finished in 1958 and first exhibited in the Hanover Gallery in London. It was one of the first pieces of art to incorporate music into visual art.

Black Friday

Black Friday as you may all already know is a BIG day where tons of sales hit the stores all across the globe with unbeatable deals. Now, although these killer deals only come once in a lifetime, so does all the madness and unthinkable as well. I have learned to stay away from Black Friday because it just blows my mind how one day we can all sit around a table and say what we are thankful for and the next day we are trampling over people and getting into fights just for a $20 discount. It's crazy. I read something on Facebook yesterday where someone posted saying, "Black Friday is the closest thing to a real life purge." That is pretty accurate too. I have seen multiple NEW videos of people fighting over products in stores, grown ass adults taking products from other people's kids hands. That just all blows my mind. It is disappointing what this world has come to, and how far people will go just to save a dollar. Thank you for reading.

Electric Light

Electric light is a light mural that was designed by the artist, Gyorgy Kepes back in 1959. This mural/project that Kepes designed was an excellent use of light in art and visual pattern awareness. What he did was stencil shapes in light emulate to make it look like a view you would see from an airplane getting ready to touch down on a city. It looks incredible now, I couldn't imagine how much respect and interest he got back in the 1950's. According to the book, he displayed it at the Smithsonian Institution in 1970 and was very liked there. I think this is a very good example f Illumination and for an artist to be this creative back over 50 years ago is just incredible and if I had tons of money I would definitely look into purchasing this piece!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays of the year for the reason being that it is a time we give thanks for what we have and what we don't. What I mean when I say that is that we, all of us, tend to be a little selfish at times in our lives, maybe some more than others, and we tend to overlook the good in our lives and what we actually DO have rather than what we want or wishing we had. I know myself, I catch myself doing this at times and I think about the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the ones fighting for our country with 40 pounds of gear on their back, taking shifts sleeping at night, sharing their powder milk from their MRE with their partner, not knowing if they will make it back onto U.S. soil to see their newborn baby and wife of 3 years. At that moment is when I realize how fortunate I am in the life I live and not JUST Thanksgiving, but everyday, we should be thankful for the lives we have.. That's what I am thankful for.

Works

This new section of Art + Electronic Media is labeled, Works and ranges from pages 54 to 190. In the introduction to the section, it looks to seem that this section will be focusing on the turn of the century in the early 1920's to begin with and will look at the motion that artists implemented into their works. Making the impact of perception through time and space. Also we will begin to see the use of light as well, and how artists used different light sources as a medium and constructed pieces within. To combine the two, artists soon developed light-infused, kinetic environments. Bringing together Motion, Duration and Illumination into the world of digital multimedia.

Dreamweaver

This past week we finished up critiqueing our video projects and I think all students in class did very well with their projects and composing great multimedia works. I recieved some great feedback from Peter and a couple students that I can take with me for my future works. The next project we will be working on will be done in Adobe Dreamweaver and we will be creating sort of a website with different pages that we will be including different information and projects within. I am excited to start this project, because I know in the last class I took with Peter we did a similar project and so that gives me a little bit of an idea on what we will be working with. Can't wait to get started! Go Cougs! :)

Video Project Critique

Today I presented my video project that I have been working on the last few week and a little bit of feedback from the class and some very beneficial feedback from my Professor. It was kind of nerve-racking to present after the students that went before me because I felt like they all have super good videos, with the Garcia brothers starting it off, they had a really good animation video with outstanding voice overs. And Jeanie had a really powerful but yet simple presentation, that I think touched our hearts all in different ways. And then there was mine, which was about my Vegas trip when my cousin got married. I knew what corrections I could have made and tried to do them, but after I changed some of the pictures and did most of my editing, it wouldn't let me go back and change the font or time on the screen. Overall though, I was happy with my video and I think it had a good message to come at the end. I really enjoyed this project.

End of the Beginning

I labeled this post End of the Beggining because this concludes the Survey section of Art + Electronic Media. The Survey section was good because it has given me a good foundation on where digital imagery and media has come from and the process it has underwent for over the past two hundred years. It was interesting to hear about when the coding and illusions first came into digital media, I ha no idea it was that long ago in time. The next section we will be looking at is labeled, Works and from the looks of it, we will probably be discussing the next generation of media. I am kind of excited to find out what it will be about! :)

Simulations & Simulacra

In this section of the Survey, we discuss how paintings, photographs and cinema have became so creative, that they actually appear to be real. It opens up with talking about a painting of grapes, done by Zeuxis, looked so life-like that birds would actually try to eat them. Not to top it off, but moving to cinema in 1895, works done by the Lumiere brothers' did a first presentation on a film showing a train approaching the near-ground of the screen that some viewers actually fled the theater. That would be hilarious to see. Come to think of it though, back in that time this was all brand new to everyone, this was the first film presented on it, so I can see why they would run out of a theater scared. And to now where the film industry is at, it has definitely came a long ways, in the past 100 years. It is unbelievable.

Charged Enviroments

Still in the Survey section of Art and Electronic Media, comes the next section that talks about Charged Environments. What exactly comes to mind when we think Charged Environments? I think of a electricity bolt. I think of a picture of the sky during a really bad thunder storm. However, what the book talks about is not only the artist's work and how they create a art piece, but we need to also focus on the perception and cognition of the viewer that is overlooking that same piece. Artists can create pieces that challenge that behavior and that traditional art work to really enhance the audience perception. One name brought up is John Cage, who is an American composer that focuses on listening to the ambient sounds of one's environment. His contribution to electronic media was phenomenal and inspired many artists to really challenge that perception of sound objects and environments. Otherwise known as Charged Environments.

Electronic Production

Electronic production is the use of technological media rendering and altering artwork to a more productive output. This approach did in fact speed up production, while at the same time, affecting the working process of artists and transforming the end result of their work on visual culture. The invention of the rotary press came in 1850, which "enabled the cheap and rapid reproduction of photographs and drawings in newspapers." (Pg. 23) Although this mechanical production was the next new thing, Walter Benjamin is one that argued that reproducing these images left a lack in 'aura' that you can find in all the handcrafted originals. I would definitely have to agree with Benjamin. Reprinting and technologically altering imagery does make a more massive reproduction, but at the same time keeping the very original so unique and expensive. I can print off a replicate of the Mona Lisa, and it's not going to be worth anything, but now if you have the original in hand, you'd be looking at about $780 million today. The handcrafted originals will always be worth the most.

Coded Form

Coded form was first introduced by the French in 1801 and was basically encoded information sent by computers to machinery to get a specific job done. Although it brought great financial success to the work industry, most workers and employees weren't too fond of it with the idea that their jobs will one day be replaced by machines. Although there might be some truth to that, with machines helping most assembly line job outfits, there still needs to be humans to make sure those continue to work productively, to maintenance them, and build even better one's that can do twice the work in half the amount of time. I still do believe that one day all of our jobs will be replaced by robots, but I don't think that day is coming anytime soon though, there is still plenty of  jobs that require human censorship. There is still hope.

Should Textbooks Still Exist?

I think this was a very beneficial discussion to have in class today. I believe this to be one of the most controversial issues for college students today, because I myself have actually pondered this idea not only about textbooks, but a college degree in general. We live in a generation of the cell phone's and all electronics for that matter. There is ten times the amount of eBooks online available then there was five years ago. With that being said, more kids are purchasing eBooks and just pulling them up on their tablets at school, then actually purchasing a hard copy in the bookstore. Same with turning in assignments, I have a lot more teachers telling us to upload our assignments via online, then actually turning in a hard copy, just because that is what the world is going to now-a-days. A Electronic World. You definitely can argue both sides still, it is a debatable issue, but I think in ten years, there will be no debate left to argue..

Job Fair 2015

This year was my first year attending the Job Fair at WSU and I had a really fun time talking to the different employers. The booth I enjoyed the most as you can probably tell is the Pasco Police Booth and it was fun talking to the officers like Sergeant Scott Warren there in the picture. What a great guy. This was definitely beneficial to me, and something I look forward to doing again next semester if they have a Job Fair every semester. Thank you WSU. Go Cougs!

Mapping & Data Visual Representation

This next project we are currently working on in our DTC class is labeled, "Mapping and Data Visual Representation." This is a vector-based project so we are conducting it in Adobe Illustrator. In this project, our objective is to Illustrate a map of an are while abstracting data and information in some schematic form to visually represent a symbolic meaning between elements on the map. We did a project similar to this one in our DTC 356 class, but for this class I think I had the idea to do a map of Kennewick and distinctly distinguish different areas based off the amount of crime they receive annually. I am still working on how I will represent this data visually, but I have a good feeling it will come out just like I wanted to, in the end! :)

Motion, Duration, Illumination

The next part of the "Survey" section begins to talk about Motion, Duration and Illumination. They all work together and the most traditional of the visual art is static, meaning to capture a moment in time. Illumination is depended upon the light source within that art. Artists have studied this light and how it creates shadows the way it falls on objects. Shanken uses the example of "Ecstasy of St. Theresa" (1647-52) where rays of sun would shine through a window above an alter. Understanding light in a piece of work is crucial and can make a significant change in how art is perceived.

Post Photo Montage & Frame Animation

Post Photo Montage & Frame Animation

So we have come to an end in the Photo Montage project and just got done with all the critiques today. I would say it went pretty well for the most part, hopefully Peter was happy with how they turned out. I completed my Jordan Jump man Figure and what I ended up doing was have him break into pieces and then come back together but each time a piece connected back it turned a different color. I used lots of warmer and lighter colors because I see a lot of Jordan apparel in lots of lighter colors that really are "out there" and kind of stand out. So I wanted to king of keep with that theme. I showed it to the class and got some very helpful feedback and now I can't wait to start the next project! :)  

Survey Part 1

The next sort of "chapter" in the book is labeled Survey and kind of just gives a background history of electronic media and the progress this world has become. For example, it starts with the battery-powered telegraphy in the 1830's to the washing machines and refrigerators in the 1910's to the televisions in the 1950's and public access to the internet in the 1980's. That is quite a bit of progress over the years, and it just keeps growing and growing. Although we may not be inventing a whole lot of new technology, we are still making our technology a lot better by reducing the size, faster, more accessible things like that. They have even already invented cars that are able to drive them selves from point A to point B and park themselves and everything! It's crazy how computers and machines are taking over this what once-was man powered world.

Pre-Face

The Pre-Face of, Art and Electronic Media sort of represents the introduction to the book. It states how technology and art, or otherwise known as "electronic art" is the new upcoming type of art that artists are now implementing to their work. In the Pre-Face it mentions how it started with oil paint in the 1400's and photography some five centuries later, and now has come to the aid of computers and electronic instruments to help with that growth. The goal here is not to completely devalue the history of art, but to add to the history through electronic media in the twenty-first century.

Montage & Frame Animation

This first assignment is based in Adobe Photoshop, in which we will be creating an animation of a famous photo and reconstructing it in our own unique way. I am pretty excited about this first assignment because although I had an idea I wanted to do, I kind of had to empraphise on what I had in mind in order to meet the requirements of the assignment. So what I do plan on doing is taking the Jordan Jumpman logo, which was created by Nike to market Michael Jordan's clothing and merchandise, and I am going to use that to some how create a frame animation to either break it apart in pieces or put it back together. I have never done an assignment like this before, but I do know how to somewhat use Photoshop so hopefully I can create something the whole class will enjoy!

Class Introductory

Hey there Guys!

Welcome to my new blog spot, here I will consistently be updating my Blogger with new posts throughout the week as I take Peter's DTC 477 course at Washington State University! I am excited for him to be back with us this semester, nothing against the other DTC instructors but Peter is a great guy and I enjoyed the 356 class I took with him! It looks like we just jumped right to it this semester with a project on Montage and Frame Animation which I am actually super stoked about because I think I have the best idea in the class! :) Well thanks for reading this post, and I hope you will follow me throughout the course of this class! Go Cougs!