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Not really appropriate for this blog, but I’m pretty lazy about updating my art-only one: Paivi and I were juried into (along with many other talented local photographers) the DCist Exposed show this year and the opening is Saturday, March 6. Come see it, if you’re in town and free. My selected photo was:
Official press release follows:
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Washington, DC — DCist.com is pleased to announce its fourth annual DCist Exposed Photography Show, at Long View Gallery, running March 6 to 21, 2010. Out of over 1,000 individual entries submitted through Flickr.com, 47 winning images were selected by a panel of judges to be included in this year’s DCist Exposed exhibit. DCist.com prides itself on engaging and promoting emerging local photographers through its daily use of images from the popular, reader-generated DCist Flickr photo pool. Each day, DCist.com selects photos from the pool for use in its daily coverage of local news, arts and entertainment, food and sports.
This year’s opening reception will be bigger and better than ever, to be held Saturday, March 6, 2010 from 6 to 10 p.m. At the bar, mixologist Scott Palmer from Dino will have a special punch, Leopold Brothers will host a liquor tasting, and Pabst Blue Ribbon will hold down the fort with plenty of beer. Nage will provide hor’dourves, while DJs v:shal kanwar and Sequoia spin tunes. Reception is $5 per guest at the door.
Long View Gallery is located at 1234 9th St. NW, just a few blocks from the Mt. Vernon/Convention Center Metro. The 2009 DCist Exposed event welcomed over 1,000 people on opening night, and with this even larger venue, we expect our biggest crowd ever. All photographs selected and displayed at DCist Exposed will be for sale at prices well below traditional gallery shows. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m.
The 2010 DCist Exposed Photography Show is sponsored by Ten Miles Square, Pink Line Project, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
EDIT: I have some newer, better webcam audio visualizers and some utility patches available now. Click Here: http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/quartz-composer-downloads/
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For all of you who have asked for this, I’ve made my Artomatic Quartz Composer based webcam audio visualizer available as a free download.(Keep in mind, this is only for Mac OS X users – Quartz isn’t portable).
You can download it here: http://jackwhitsitt.com/Artomatic09-final-whitsitt.zip
(Im calling it “WAVIQ” for short…Webcam Audio Visualizer In Quartz”…since it needs some sort of a name and I dont feel that creative about it.)
A quick overview:
The composition has two inputs – the webcam and an audio source. If you have a built in webcam, it will default to that. Likewise, if you have a built in mic (most laptops do), the composition will default to using that as your audio source. You can change these by going into the patch inspector for the Video and Audio patches and selecting “settings”. (In the case of the audi, double-click the macro patch “Audio Source” and then click on “Audio Input” to get there).
The only other settings you’ll be interested in are the Increasing Scale and Decreasing Scale parameters found in the Audio Input patch. These affect how fast the values for movement, color, etc. get bigger and how fast they get smaller. This will affect how the composition responds to different music. Also, keep in mind that in the audio settings of OS X itself, you can change the mic sensitivity. This will affect how the composition responds as well.
You can also find a basic tutorial to get you started on tweaking this in the links below.
Thats it. Drop me a line with any questions and have fun with it. If you do end up using it, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks!
Jack
- Tutorial I wrote explaining the basics of how this works:
- Stop-Motion Video Example of how I’m using it at Artomatic:
- Screen-shots of my Artomatic Art Installation:
I’ve spammed this particular link everwhere else I can think of, but still neglected to post it here on my blog.
Basically, I was approached a few months ago by a senior editor of Symantec’s online magazine “Norton Today” because they were interested in doing a piece on Art and Security. I was approached because of my old work in security data visualization and the fact that’d I’d started to rework and hang the pieces in art shows like Artomatic and My Space on 7th.
Anyway, the interview went really well (in addition to being a lot of fun) and it’s now online at:
http://nortontoday.symantec.com/features/articles/art_of_security.php
(Edit: This link now appears down after a few months. Symantec has republished the article here: http://www.thegeekweekly.com/feature/turning_computer_vis_into_art/index.html )
They used a few older images in their Flash slideshow (My fault – I didnt get them newer images in time). These were the originals we used at NetSec to do analysis and which have been in a number of presentations (and were in the batch I sent to ArcSight as examples when they were still developing Interactive Discovery, iirc).
You can find the “art” versions that I’ve hung up in galleries at the following link:
http://sintixerr.wordpress.com/art-versions-of-data-visualizations/
I’m still interested in working more of these, but have been moving from graphing – which was a necessity of the business at the time – into a broader field of ontological information/concept representation in art.
(This is in addition to my media experimentation with / interest in projection. I think Id like to merge these two tracks together in the future, but havent gotten there yet.)
Hey all!
I’m going to be showing some data visualizations at the My Space on 7th art show in Washington, DC starting Friday, July 11 at the Touchstone Gallery! Everyone should come out. I took a look at the space and there’s some interesting work hanging already. (And I have to thank Paige, here, who unintentionally helped me decide what to show…but more on that in a later post.)
Oh. And there will be wine tasting opening night. :)
There will be three old, but reworked images and one new one created just for this show. Only one has ever been printed before and they all look pretty fantastic.
The new one consists of two superimposed graphs (a paraplot and a scatterplot) of illegitimate traffic going to/from “jackwhitsitt.com” (that would be, uh, most of it).
The three older ones are:
Destination Port Traffic Volume (global sample)
(Test Data from custom developed SEM correlation modules)
(Pcap data from 10,000 spam emails)
So, while we’re working out the logistics for opening an entire Second Life island for Washington, DC artists, art events, and arts organizations to utilize, I’ve moved some of my own stuff into a small scratch space to test architectural concepts.
There isn’t much there right now that you can’t find on flickr, but I’m building a virtual take on the Ofrenda / Day of the Dead installation Angela, Paivi, and I built at the Art Outlet show. The movie streams into Second Life and is surrounded by some virtual concept art.
You can find the space and the exhibit HERE
Below is a snapshot of me sitting down, watching the movie and getting a feel for what needs to be built next:
Eep. The year’s over! That might seem old news (God, we’re already a week into 08), but the sad thing is that to remember what I’ve been doing for the last few months I had to go back to my Flickr stream and -look- at the photographic evidence! Kind of cool…but not?
But before I get into what -has- happened, I’d like to talk about what is and -will- happen. I just spent a lovely evening at the soon-to-be-no-more Dr. Dremo’s in Arlington with a bunch of the Art Outlet volunteers, artists, other board members, and friends.
One of the reasons I was there was to talk about digital art shows and the imminent re-opening of my free space for Washington, DC artists and arts events in Second Life – the SintixErr Gallery. (About which Amanda Hess has written a great article: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34394 )
It looks like Art Outlet (the board of which I chair – at least for one more year!) will be, as a 501c(3) non-profit arts organization in DC, will be sponsoring an entire island in Second Life. My high level goals for the island will be to:
- Provide a place for any DC-based artist to exhibit their work to worldwide audience
- Host mixed-reality events in support of Art Outlet shows
- Provide a central Second Life hosting capability for other DC arts organizations, museums, galleries, etc.
- Allow for additional research into interesting ways to use virtual worlds to aid art through technology and technology through art.
There’s still no -monetary- sponsor for this (and it’s not a done deal till it’s done), but I can front the cost initially and hope through grants, donations, shows, and by way of small fees for other organizations to use the space, the area will support itself and break even.
In addition to the pure Second Life announcement, I’ve also been working on putting together (and participating in) one or more digital arts and technology shows in the DC area. These are still in their infancy, but there are a number of great, dedicated, reliable people working on them and I expect some cool event news to show up here in the next few months.
You can find more info here on what some of the participating artists’ thoughts on technology, culture, and art are in this thread:
http://artdc.org/forum/index.php?topic=7860.msg33345#msg33345
I’ll close out this post with my own thoughts from that thread:
I have two perspectives on technology’s role in culture, as it pertains to my art. First, I’ve always struggled with the concept that there is “technology” and “stuff that isn’t technology”. I never really believed that there was an inherent line there. The only thing that really rings true is Douglas Adams’ quote on the subject. He said something to the effect of “Technology means ‘stuff that isn’t quite working right yet’”. Pencils, oil paint, paper, cameras – they’re all technology. They’re absolutely the same thing as computers and any other digital mechanisms for interacting with human senses.
So, my first interest in technology, art, and culture is in the process of cultural integration of new technology into the “stuff that works” category. Things we forget about. I’m interested in the creation of and interaction with art that REFUSES to distinguish between itself and any other “old” tools used to create art. I like to see moving images framed behind museum quality glass hanging from a wall. I enjoy the idea of traditional tools being used as part of the creation of what would otherwise be considered “new technology” art.
Along these lines, I’m also fascinated by the artifical lines and boundaries we (humans) create to keep our perception of the universe coherent. Technology has always helped people do more better faster, but until the advent of science allowing long distance communication between people, our boundaries expanded, but tended to retain the same shapes. As people began to communciate over vast distances, however, our sense of “place” began to erode a little bit. TV accelerated that process, cell phones turned the process into an avalanche, and the internet looks like it might eradicate the bond between place and self altogether in our culture. Not only that, but with the variety of identities we are begining to maintain, our most basic sense of “self” is getting fuzzy. Who are we when we can “be” in multiple places at once. Who are we when we can be physically perceived by others in different ways at the same time? We have IM accounts, blog accounts, we exist (well, some of us ) in virtual worlds, etc. Part of how we perceive and understand who we are ourselves is by how we are reflected back by other people. What happens to us as our reflections become fractured and non-contiguous?
Art, over time, has often been used to explore our relationship – as people – to the universe around us. In my mind, these particular technologically-wrought changes in our culture are acute and our exploration of them as humans is well-served by doing so through art.
