Final

For this final performance art piece, I knew I wanted to do something that represented me. Swimming has always been a part of my life. I was on the swim team for 12 years, have taught swim lessons since 2010 and been a coach since 2013. I didn't know if this was considered performance art, but it is to me.

Minecraft

Minecraft has been a very popular game for years now for a large range of ages. It's simple enough to where kids can grasp and play it, and it's more complex aspects allow for people with too much free time to create elaborate and massive to scale works of art. I've seen everything from complete replicas of towns from Skyrim and World of Warcraft to modern cities like Tokyo and LA. It's such a simple game design, but people get sucked in to it for hours. Now I don't have the patience for these types of games, but I admire the people who create these masterpieces. And considering it's creator Notch had issued a statement to fans explaining the decision to sell his studio to Microsoft back in 2014 FOR 2.5 BILLION, I'd say Minecraft is here to stay. 

Bored Panda

Craig Allan creates unique portraits of pop-culture icons using people as pixels to create portraits. Some of his famous pieces are of Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy and the Statue of Liberty, but probably the coolest oneI see is the portrait of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
From the site: "Craig’s earliest experimentation took the form of street portraiture, an endeavor that helped him perfect his flair for replicating the human figure and afforded the budding artist a sense of economic autonomy."
I enjoy art from people who look at life from a different point of view, which this definitely is. Anyone can paint a portrait, but it takes a lot of preparation and effort to create something this detailed of that scale. He took something as modern as pixels and made them organic as the medium and the subject. 

 

Tech+Music

The 5 music videos in this link are probably the most advanced and creative music videos I've ever seen. They aren't creative in the Lady Gaga or Bjork kind of way, but more so in the future. They use incredible technology, and even something as simple as HTML 5 to create a music video that whoever is watching it will be amazed and mesmerized. This is the future of music. 
Videos

LED

I think in the past couple years LED lights have grown more popular, and are being used for more than just Christmas lights and household bulbs. They're being used for art, and even clothing, which was difficult to do pre LED. Yes fiber optics were around, but they were expensive and limited. LEDS open the doors for light artists to expand in color and versatility. 

"Handbags that display tweets. Bracelets that charge your phone. Bangles that light up when you get a phone call. Tech and fashion are teaming up to make wearables more wearable."

LED Clothing
Technology and the fashion world are beginning to merge and the results are amazing, I can't wait till all of this stuff is affordable and we can start "looking" like the future. 
Wearable Technology

Gorillaz

We talked quite a bit in class about Miku Hatsune and her virtual vocals and persona, but we forgot to mention the Gorillaz, who have been doing it for much longer than the Japanese. Gorillaz are an English virtual band created in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. The band consists of four animated members: 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs, all who have a simian/human appearance. Feel good inc. was their first and very revolutionary single and album. I remember when it got to the radio, people loved the song and the music video, but we weren't aware that the members would never be seen in person. I think this threw people off, I think they were ahead of their time. If they tried to make a comeback now, they would be much more widely received as we burst into the digital future. 

Warcraft

The world of Warcraft universe has grown immensely from a simple RTS game in 1994 to a now fully realized full length movie. The aspect I want to talk about today is the art development. In an age of super realism and immersive world game realm, world of Warcraft has stood as a staple and grandfather to modern RPG's and MMO's. Blizzard has done a great job at modernizing and updating it's games for two decades. Now all the people that have played their games for so long are very excited to see what this movie will be like. Just from the trailer I'm ready to go see it just for the cgi quality. It seems like they put a lot of time and effort into it and it will be interesting to see years of ideas come to fruition. 

2016

 1994

Making something out of nothing

We've all made art out of cardboard pieces at some point in our life, but it was probably in elementary school and it probably just looked like a heap of poo. But what this crew has done to some simple pieces of cardboard is magic. This is such a cool new idea this guy had, to make all those different items out of something we just normally throw away as a society. To make something as cool as a guitar that Fender can claim as authentic and original is amazing. This is low technology material but high in detail and musicality. Talk about reduce reuse and recycle! He could make a whole company from this idea and create amazing consumer items basically from trash! 

Somerset

Upon visiting the Somerset UK site, I found that there is an exhibition in Barcelona called Big Bang Data. It explores the world of multimedia and the web, where artists take on the challenge of creating art out of this. 
I think this installation is a very futuristic and foward thinking way of creating art. We make all this data all the time without knowing it, and these digital artists have found a way to make it beautiful and artistic.
"Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Explore how the datafied world affects us all through the work of artists, designers, innovators and thinkers." 

Projection Mapping

I think projection mapping is a revolutionary idea added to the art world. There are thousands of possibilities with what to do. This one I found from http://www.drawlight.net/projection-mapping-eng/ is in expo Milan, and immerses the viewer into a completely underwater world to create a 360° immersive projection aiming to simulate a slow descent into the abysses. It comes alive every fifteen minutes with an amazing and unique show dedicate to the sea and its depths. It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

Temple

I love movies, especially sci fi and fantasy. I look all the time for new trailers and teasers of upcoming movies, which is how I found this little gem. We watched blade runner in class, and this seems like a similar setting and time period. Just from the little snippet we get from the teaser, I see a decent amount of cool and new technology that is suggested to be in the near future. I think it's movies like this that give tech companies and visionaries the ideas to move forward with some of the technology they see. I will definitely be seeing this movie 

Edit: found out this already released so am now going to watch

James Jean

I stumbled across this artist while browsing, and I'm already impressed and mesmerized.
 http://hypebeast.com/2015/12/james-jean-apple-pencil-art
I'm always amazed at these types of artist who can just create art out of thin air. I love his style and color usage. To make a digital image look like a colored pencil drawing is just beyond talented in my opinion. Sooner or later digital art is going to take over and become the most widely utilized form and media. Eventually paint will become obsolete. 

FFVII

Square Enix is coming out with a remake of one of the best video games of all time: Final Fantasy 7.
They released the teaser earlier this year at E3, the biggest conference for video game announcements. Now why remake it you ask? Well it was one of the highest grossing games of the 90's and has one of the largest followings of any franchise in the gaming world. Final fantasy is an immersive, ever changing world that at that back in the day was a huge leap towards the future of gaming. It was originally released in 1997 and quickly became a consumer favorite. Now I was only 2 at that time but around 2003 when I got a PlayStation 2, I came across Final Fantasy 10. That is my favorite game of all time, so now that I've heard how in the gaming community there is such an excitement for the 7 remake that I may just have to see what all the hubbub is about. It's amazing to see how far game and programming engines have come since 1997. The first vid is the remake trailer, the 2nd is the original version.

Speedy Graphito

I clicked on this in the syllabus honestly because it had a funny name. But I should have guessed it was all graffiti art. I think this as a style or respectable art form has grown greatly in a short amount of time. Pre 2000 it was seen as vandalism and tasteless. But now people are creating whole art shows out of graffiti that can really be quite beautiful. Yes they're still being strewn about on buildings all over the world, but now the public is giving notoriety and fame to some of these artists. I enjoyed looking through this site at the different styles and uniqueness of the pieces. I'll put below some of my favorites.

Media art

I decided to share my favorite and least favorite installations from this http://www.mediaartdesign.net, just simply because there were too many to talk about individually.

Favorites:

Ones I think are not so good:

Crystal Universe

I came across this link while browsing Facebook, and I thought it would be perfect to share.
This is an art installation in Tokyo, that when you walk through, makes you feel like you're in an endless room. You personally can change the way the lights move and their color. They can even take the shape of different galaxies. "It’s like Aristotle’s theory of causation meets TeamLab’s manipulation of digital lighting."