inspiration, SI 2008
• Andy Warhol’s Rorschach paintings
Concerned with the formalism and the ambiguity of the forms, the democracy of “no one can be wrong” in interpreting them. When Warhol embarked on his series of Rorschach paintings, he incorrectly assumed that the test involved making inkblots as well as interpreting them. Had he been better informed, he later explained, he would simply have copied the original ten inkblots. Instead, he created his own, pouring paint across a large canvas and folding it over to create symmetrical, butterfly-like patterns.
• Ecological Psychology: Concepts and Methods for Studying the Environment of Human Behavior
Roger G Barker
Ecological psychology: attempts to reconcile psychology with nonpsychological inputs; the “inside-out” problem in which biological forces such as brain lesions or hormone concentrations function by laws that are different that are completely unrelated to psychology though they can influence thoughts and subsequent behavior.
“The view is not uncommon among psychologists that the environment of behavior is relatively unstructured, passive arena of objects and events upon which man behaves in accordance with the programming he carries about within himself. But research at the Midwest Field Station indicates that when we look at the environment of behavior as a phenomenon worthy of investigation for itself, and not as an instrument for unraveling the behavior-relevant programming within persons, the situation is quite different. From his viewpoint, the environment is seen to consist of highly structured, improbably arrangements of objects and events, which coerce behavior in accordance with their own dynamic, patterning. We found that we could predict some aspects of children’s behavior more adequately from knowledge of the behavior characteristics of the drugstores, arithmetic classes, and basketball games they inhabited than from knowledge of the behavior tendencies of particular children.”
• Andreas Nicholas Fischer
http://dasautomat.com/
“A Week in the Life”
“A sculptural visualization of telecommunications data, representing the artists’ movement and communication made with his cell phone in one week. Made in response to the German Telecommunications Data Retention Act, which requires telecommunications providers to collect the connection data of all customers. The sculpture documents the artist’s position in the city and the density of cell sites reflects the frequency of movement. The data set was recorded by software the artist wrote for his phone that recorded the coordinates of the antennae that he converted to coordinates to create a map of Berlin.
• Barbara Kruger
“The juxtaposition of word and image in Barbara Kruger's highly recognizable work is derived from twelve years as a designer and photo editor for Conde Nast publications. Short, pithy caption-like copy is scattered over fragmented and enlarged photographs appropriated from various media. These humorous works suspend the viewer between the fascination of the image and the indictment of the text while reminding us that language and its use within culture to construct and maintain proverbs, jobs, jokes, myths, and history reinforce the interests and perspective of those who control it” - Craig Owen
• “The Hidden Dimension, Edward Hall
Proxemics Theory: “the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture."
Spatial interpretation that is highly culturally grounded and learned, rather than explicitly instructed. Mapped the various “personal reaction bubbles” or zones of intimacy delineating comfort zones of individuals ranging from pubic space for strangers to intimate space for lovers. Made an attempt to determine the limits to the proxemic zones of Americans using measures of posture, distance, touch, eye contact, and vocal loudness.
• Julie Cockburn
http://www.campdengallery.co.uk/displayexhibition.php?eid=35
Creates mixed media sculptures, most memorably cross-sections of Playboy magazines exploring issues of feminine representation and dimension through reappropriated media.
• Gestalt (“Whole Form”) Theory: Max Wertheimer (widely acknowledged founder)
Early theory advocating a holistic approach to dealing with the mind and brain. A chief principle: the whole is larger than the sum of its parts, and should be considered in a global context in order to be fully understood. Significant contributions to the field of perception in principles/laws of unity that the brain tends to align itself along with (closure, similarity, proximity, symmetry, continuity, common fate) in accordance to the principle of pragnanz (“conciseness”) that we tend to order our experience in an orderly and simple way.
“The fundamental "formula" of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way [1]. There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.”
• Bistable/Multistable Perception
Perceptual phenomena (most famously the Necker cube and the face/vases illusion), which are subject to complete perceptual reinterpretation resulting from spontaneous subjective changes.
• Nervous System
http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/
Jewelry creation using experimental pattern-generating algorithms, which simulate different gestures ranging from mesh movement to dendrite growth. Visitors to the site can download applets that allow them to change the parameters of stressors or growth factors in order to create unique designs that they therefore custom-make to order.
• Synesthesia
Phenomenon where one sensory pathway leads to experiences in another, separate pathway. Common manifestations are grapheme --> color (where letters are perceived as "colored"), spatial sequence (where numbers occupy specific locations in space), sound--> color, ordinal linguistic personification, and words --> taste (lexical --> gustatory).
• http://electricsheep.org
Open source screen-saver in which a user can download a starter "sheep" (an abstract morphing design) which then goes on to interact with all other computers running the same program that are conneced to the internet in order to "evolve" new sheep. The name is referential to Philip Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"? A genetic algorithm operates over the sheep population, so user-voted favorite "sheep" reproduce and live longer.
there is too much, too much
and i can't get enough
Concerned with the formalism and the ambiguity of the forms, the democracy of “no one can be wrong” in interpreting them. When Warhol embarked on his series of Rorschach paintings, he incorrectly assumed that the test involved making inkblots as well as interpreting them. Had he been better informed, he later explained, he would simply have copied the original ten inkblots. Instead, he created his own, pouring paint across a large canvas and folding it over to create symmetrical, butterfly-like patterns.
• Ecological Psychology: Concepts and Methods for Studying the Environment of Human Behavior
Roger G Barker
Ecological psychology: attempts to reconcile psychology with nonpsychological inputs; the “inside-out” problem in which biological forces such as brain lesions or hormone concentrations function by laws that are different that are completely unrelated to psychology though they can influence thoughts and subsequent behavior.
“The view is not uncommon among psychologists that the environment of behavior is relatively unstructured, passive arena of objects and events upon which man behaves in accordance with the programming he carries about within himself. But research at the Midwest Field Station indicates that when we look at the environment of behavior as a phenomenon worthy of investigation for itself, and not as an instrument for unraveling the behavior-relevant programming within persons, the situation is quite different. From his viewpoint, the environment is seen to consist of highly structured, improbably arrangements of objects and events, which coerce behavior in accordance with their own dynamic, patterning. We found that we could predict some aspects of children’s behavior more adequately from knowledge of the behavior characteristics of the drugstores, arithmetic classes, and basketball games they inhabited than from knowledge of the behavior tendencies of particular children.”
• Andreas Nicholas Fischer
http://dasautomat.com/
“A Week in the Life”
“A sculptural visualization of telecommunications data, representing the artists’ movement and communication made with his cell phone in one week. Made in response to the German Telecommunications Data Retention Act, which requires telecommunications providers to collect the connection data of all customers. The sculpture documents the artist’s position in the city and the density of cell sites reflects the frequency of movement. The data set was recorded by software the artist wrote for his phone that recorded the coordinates of the antennae that he converted to coordinates to create a map of Berlin.
• Barbara Kruger
“The juxtaposition of word and image in Barbara Kruger's highly recognizable work is derived from twelve years as a designer and photo editor for Conde Nast publications. Short, pithy caption-like copy is scattered over fragmented and enlarged photographs appropriated from various media. These humorous works suspend the viewer between the fascination of the image and the indictment of the text while reminding us that language and its use within culture to construct and maintain proverbs, jobs, jokes, myths, and history reinforce the interests and perspective of those who control it” - Craig Owen
• “The Hidden Dimension, Edward Hall
Proxemics Theory: “the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture."
Spatial interpretation that is highly culturally grounded and learned, rather than explicitly instructed. Mapped the various “personal reaction bubbles” or zones of intimacy delineating comfort zones of individuals ranging from pubic space for strangers to intimate space for lovers. Made an attempt to determine the limits to the proxemic zones of Americans using measures of posture, distance, touch, eye contact, and vocal loudness.
• Julie Cockburn
http://www.campdengallery.co.uk/displayexhibition.php?eid=35
Creates mixed media sculptures, most memorably cross-sections of Playboy magazines exploring issues of feminine representation and dimension through reappropriated media.
• Gestalt (“Whole Form”) Theory: Max Wertheimer (widely acknowledged founder)
Early theory advocating a holistic approach to dealing with the mind and brain. A chief principle: the whole is larger than the sum of its parts, and should be considered in a global context in order to be fully understood. Significant contributions to the field of perception in principles/laws of unity that the brain tends to align itself along with (closure, similarity, proximity, symmetry, continuity, common fate) in accordance to the principle of pragnanz (“conciseness”) that we tend to order our experience in an orderly and simple way.
“The fundamental "formula" of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way [1]. There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.”
• Bistable/Multistable Perception
Perceptual phenomena (most famously the Necker cube and the face/vases illusion), which are subject to complete perceptual reinterpretation resulting from spontaneous subjective changes.
• Nervous System
http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/
Jewelry creation using experimental pattern-generating algorithms, which simulate different gestures ranging from mesh movement to dendrite growth. Visitors to the site can download applets that allow them to change the parameters of stressors or growth factors in order to create unique designs that they therefore custom-make to order.
• Synesthesia
Phenomenon where one sensory pathway leads to experiences in another, separate pathway. Common manifestations are grapheme --> color (where letters are perceived as "colored"), spatial sequence (where numbers occupy specific locations in space), sound--> color, ordinal linguistic personification, and words --> taste (lexical --> gustatory).
• http://electricsheep.org
Open source screen-saver in which a user can download a starter "sheep" (an abstract morphing design) which then goes on to interact with all other computers running the same program that are conneced to the internet in order to "evolve" new sheep. The name is referential to Philip Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"? A genetic algorithm operates over the sheep population, so user-voted favorite "sheep" reproduce and live longer.
there is too much, too much
and i can't get enough