“fantasy therapy” & “princesses” (bootcamp final & interactive story)
Here’s the link to my final bootcamp code project “Fantasy Therapy”:
And here is my interactive story “Princesses”:
Enjoy!
week 1
inspirational works
Three artist/designers’ work I find inspiring are “Beauty Kit” by PLEIX, “Dreams Result in More Dreams” by Daniele Buetti and “Stanley” by DigitalKitchen.
“Beauty Kit”
PLEIX are a French group of seven video directors and graphic artists producing videos, adverts and installations both personal and commercial. Their focus is to destabilize common perceptions of contemporary culture. “Beauty Kit” is an ironic instructional video commenting on mainstream beauty ideals and plastic surgery.
“Dreams Result in More Dreams”
“Dreams Result in More Dreams” is a photographic series by Daniel Buetti. Provocative images (mainly of women) are displayed on large light boxes into which tiny holes are pierced to create patterns of light and lines of subversive text. The works are at once beautiful and haunting, often pulling on our innermost insecurities.
“Stanley”
“Stanley” is an interactive piano that takes song requests via Twitter. Perhaps as impressive as the piano itself is the video that accompanies the project, tells Stanley’s life story from initial concept, to designing, to coding and construction, and finally to the end product. The video, available online, is a wonderful way to embody the spirit of the whole project, and to encourage user interaction from all around the world.
code here i come!
I’m really looking forward to “Creative & Comp Lab” because I know it will be a challenge where I’m simultaneously elated and extremely fearful, both of which seem to effectuate my best work. The overarching outcome I hope to achieve from this class is to feel like I stepped (or leapt!) out of my comfort zone and skipped away with a new skill set in my pocket. With no prior knowledge of code other than a secret password, I am here to explore new programs and technologies, to acquire new skills and techniques, and to subsequently gain a sense of new attitudes and possibilities.
As I explained in my brief presentation last week, I am a storyteller at heart. So I view “Creative & Comp Lab” as a way to enhance my storytelling by exploring the interactivity of narrative: to make my stories more dynamic, more organic, more personalized/connected to the viewer/reader/ audience/user, and thus (hopefully) more compelling.
More specifically, I want to play on an analogy between Arduino and the human body. Both are systems designed to receive input from the environment, to process this input and to respond with output. I’m thinking of taking a provocative approach to this analogy, focusing on reproductive organs. One idea is to look at the way sex is often portrayed in mainstream media as formulaic, emotionally monochromatic and entirely predictable, as if it were electronic. Another idea is to to draw upon gender clichés, with men as ‘hard’ware and women as ‘soft’ware. Finally I’ve recently started working as a volunteer with CAGeM (Campaign Against Genital Mutilation) and would like to incorporate that theme into my work as well, starting with my interactive story!