SumoPaint on roids

So Sumopaint is a free program based on the web, but i happened upon a totally free 3d graphics and design engine. I was almost sure they wouldn't offer something like this for free. Apparently, this DAZ Studio is a program for running and designing full 3d models. This company/site offers a selection of free 2d engines for designing people to environments. Interesting what can be found on the internet nowadays.

http://freeartsoftware.com/survey3d2d-downloads/download-info.php?sid=12

This stuff too hard?

Funny Art Pictures...at Funnyartpictures.com who woulda guessed?
This site has a funny compilation of cool artwork that has a bit of a dry humor to it.

New 2.0 Apps

I found a website called Listio.com and it features a list of up and coming web 2.0 applications. One that seemed very interesting is Stickr. It is like the ultimate Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/YouTube App which lets you comment on anything on the web. Considering people's habits with constant updates and chat online, i imagine a lot of people enjoy this program.

Weird Digital Art

I'm always on the lookout for interesting new pieces on the web. I even have an app on my google homepage that finds random art every time i load the page. This was the piece featured today, and im not sure how i really feel about it. I am very curious as to the processes and inspirations in creating such a piece. Is it purely digital, or were the original images from photography.

Cooperstown Juried Art Show

http://www.cooperstownart.com/photofiles.html

On a random adventure, i made a trip to Cooperstown with a few friends. We had never been there before and decided to jaunt around downtown and check out the scenes. Upon deciding the baseball hall of fame was too boring and expensive to be worthwhile, we crossed the street to the library/gallery to check if there was a show going on. To our pleasure, the Regional Juried Art Show was in town.

The gallery was held in the upstairs gallery space at the library. The show was a double-feature, with a private art show and a juried regional show. The regional show featured mostly paintings with a handful of large sculptures in the middle of the room. The painting were very skilled and impressive, ranging from large acrylics to small, detailed oils and sketches. My favorite was an oil on canvas of a fluffy cat. The content of the painting was not my favorite, but rather the way in which it was framed and presented. As a whole, the painting was neutral and dark, with a highly detailed cat. It was classic, bordered by a thick, ornate frame. The piece was just beautiful, not necessarily interesting, but simply beautiful. Another favorite was a digital print of a nude but with florescent orange highlight around the body. It was so vibrant, it looked backlit. It took many second looks and waving hands over the piece to try to determine if it was indeed backlit.

The private show was "objects of art" and featured the artist Larry Engel. The sculptures in this show were small and detailed, mostly made of bronze. He liked to take objects and mash them up with other objects to convey a (usually political or societal) message. I liked the sculpture of a turtle with a pen tip for a head. It was entitled "the check is in the mail." Another favorite was the set of occupational pieces. He liked to place a face on objects and entitle them after the occupation the tool is used for. If this is confusing, he crafted a face on a chisel and called it "portrait of a sculptor." Many of his pieces had a great message and level of skill.

After the show, we definitely felt our time and money (it was free) was well spent. I throughly enjoyed the show and will remember some of these pieces for later inspiration. The link above is to the page of the gallery and features pictures from the show so you can see the pieces for yourself.

My most recent video

Project 3 was just completed in Digital Art Class (116 of course). I drew inspiration from the everyday "struggles" that we go through and what it would be like if that were instantly solved. The idea of randomly stumbling upon the power of telekinesis would be mind blowing. I decided to animate this discovery to explore the idea. My girlfriend Brianna served as my model and her bright and powerful facial expressions really helped convey the message. The choice for bright orange titles was just a spur of the moment decision to avoid the cliche black title screens and give a little more "cheeriness" to the mood of the piece. Stop motion animation is a great way to alter reality, and give new views of perception. (views of perception...is that redundant? meh...)

Finding Sumopaint Artwork

I find Sumopaint to be a fascinating website and web 2.0 application. However, i find the community artwork to be rather childish and uninteresting. Perhaps this place was indeed crafted for the population of emo anime artists. Regardless, it is almost entirely made of this sort of art, and when looking for real art pieces among the community pieces i get frustrated. I made it a point to sift through these pieces to find something a bit more interesting. I found the above piece which was a clever use of all the elements Sumopaint has to offer. It also features several of the styles i used in the program.

8-bit Stop-Motion Music Video

I found this video while searching for cool stop motion videos on YouTube. This particular video transcends many levels of digital art. It is animating still images, rendering live action video and re-animating old 8-bit characters. All this is done to music, trippy german pop music. It all comes together to form a very interesting piece.

Circuits made for the body

Following our professor's lector regarding making technology interchangeable with human tissue I found this article. Stumbling around on Digg.com, there was one article that seemed to pertain directly to this topic. It was entitled "Bioelectronics: Silky Circuits" and it was securing the recent developments in flexible micro-circuits. The technology has been ported from an invention called electronic paper, which has ultra-thin circuitry. Apparently, this technology could be implanted into the skin to relay information to the brain. Ideas for this use could be giving the sensation of touch back to people who have lost their sense. The circuit matrix is implanted in matrix of silk, and once the silk dissolves, only the matrix is left in the system.

It is a very intriguing discovery and crosses the gap between organic matter and digital technology.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=16056321&fsrc=scn/DG/pp/hp/tc05

Apparently you can beat Simcity

This individual took a pretty common game - Simcity, and made a piece of rt from it. When you look at the progression to his final piece, there s a symmetry and artistic mosiac look to it. This could be considered time-based because it needed time to "grow" to look the way it does. It's original scope was not as white and tiles, it probably was spotty. Otherwise, this person has utterly destroyed this otherwise unbeatable game. Gotta love the ominous music too.

Rube Golberg Shenanigans

After the Rube Goldberg exploration in class, i decided to go out in the world of YouTube and search for others. This one came up and i looked into after we were told the asian cultures do this a lot. Amid the over-zealous japanese announcing and borders is an ingenious device. Some elements take quite awhile to perform - like the sauter-iron fuse. The bowling-pin tower was pretty amazing as well. All to make dinner? simply amazing.

Reflections in a Teacup

The opening of the student show in the foreman gallery took place on April 8th, 2010. The show was the culmination of photography students Darcy Dolge and Dominique Thomas. Before entering the show, i already noticed the array of half teacups on the wall.
These interesting items snagged my attention and had me over by the wall after entering the show. The teacups were interactive, playing a variety of music as you view the photos. This aspect really crossed the borders of conventional photography, giving an element of multimedia to the piece. Another great piece in this show was the "lemon zinger" piece featured on the glass walls. The pictures here were that of people before and after tasting bitter lemon juice. The pictures were very comical, especially because I know many of the models featured in this piece. This piece made you think how bitter this concoction must have been to procure these facial expressions.
The other artist featured in this show had a smaller presentation with a little less draw. Dominique's features were all pictures of baseball players and games. Her goal with photography is to be a sports journalist. These pictures were indeed on that track. The pictures had that newspaper feel and i could easily imagine them when flipping to the sport section in the news. I believe her goal was definitely evident, however, the content was pretty linear, there wasn't much to explore in her show. I dont mean to sound cruel, but i don't believe an art opening is quite the place for these items.
Together, these two photography students put together quite a show. I would definitely say teh teacup show really took over the opening. Darcy did a great job of creating a whole environment around her pictures, and i thoroughly enjoyed the opening.

New aspect of web 2.0?

While tooling around on facebook the other day, i came across an interesting revelation. I noticed facebook had recommended i "reconnect" with one of my friends in the top corner. There is only one problem here, this is one of my friends who had passed away last winter. I wondered why no one had deleted her profile, so i clicked on it to see if it was still active. Indeed there was much activity here.
The site had become something of a memorial, other friends posting comments about thinking of her or remembering her. I noticed people had been commenting regularly since the event of her death months ago. I was shocked, really, just to find out how people were using this account in such a way. Society nowadays is oh so remarkable...

Copy/Paste Test

Imbedable Revelation

Embeddable Flash Games - Get Games For Your Site

I just had a revelation, and thought...hey if i can imbed videos, can i imbed flash games too? The answer is yes after a quick search on the goog.