Pastures– Lee Byron

 http://www.leebyron.com/what/creatures/

I was inspired to look up Lee Byron after we saw his clock in class. On his website he also has a series of  three processing exercises he did. They all initially appeared to be quite simple. They require viewer interaction for their true complexity to be revealed.  My favorite is his project called “Pastures” in which he has the viewer create creatures by clicking their mouse. The viewer chooses not only where the creature is created, but what the creature will be.  A different creature is created depending on how long you hold your mouse down. I enjoy how the program hides it’s complexity and thereby forces interaction.

Touch and Reaction  -Lee Byron

I found this project really interesting and inspiring. This piece explores the gestural reaction to texture. Byron uses an IR camera to capture the viewer’s hand movements as they interact with a mystery texture box. The box is designed with light surrounding the hole in which the viewer is to place their hand, so as to disallow them to see inside. The movement of the “viewer’s” hand is picked up with the IR camera. Byron presents the footage of each of the hands in a grid style, so you can see different hands interacting with different textures. Underneath each texture there are also continuously changing one word descriptors. These words were taken from the audio taken of the participants during the interaction. I think seeing the juxtaposition between different gestures and words i a good combination. I wish there was an audio component.

Future Fragments– Kyle McDonald

I went to Art and Code this weekend, so there is really way way too much to write about. I am just going to write about one specific project from one artist who attended. I really liked Kyle McDonald’s work, so I looked up his website. Although, he has done many more impressive projects I thoroughly  enjoyed Future Fragments. He describes the project as an “anti-time-capsule” . He encoded sound bites from his classmates and inscribed them as color on little pieces of paper.  He then had those same individuals carry around those little slips of paper for a summer. Some of the slips were lost and some were damaged. I assume, although it is not mentioned, that he re-translated these bits into sound. I’d be interested to see a sound and video piece made based on this project.