Steve’s Stuff

Five days until the due date and Team 5 is looking good. Here’s what has been going on.

Muhammad got the car driving around and programmed it for random movement. Instead of using some sort of infra-red “thing” to keep the car within the canvas, it’s programmed to back up automatically if it bumps into something. From what I can tell, Muhammad spent a LOT of time on this. His part works and is essentially done (although he’s got a few improvements).

Kendra and I have been talking about the artist’s statement a lot. She’s got a lot of great ideas and good things to say - it’s been fun to work together. She’s scheduled to fabricate the car’s body as soon as Muhammad is finished with it. This sounds difficult, but apparently, she’s cool with it. Kendra is also providing the canvas and the boundary. We discussed the use of a boundary and decided that we would like to let the artist wander off of the canvas, but since we’re performing in a public space that may not wish to have paint on the floor, we’re keeping it reigned in. It’s purely for practical reasons.

Aaron is doing work with sensors. I’m not sure exactly how that’s coming along. I haven’t seen them working yet, so I don’t know if there are any problems or if they’re in good shape. Aaron was in favor of scaling our original goal of 12-16 sensors back to 6, so that’s what I think we’ll end up with.

Lauren was in charge of researching abstract expressionism and working with Prof. Harrison to get the logochip to interface with Pd. She found some info on wikipedia and a couple other sources and is now recording herself reading them aloud. Kendra and I had a few suggestions, so she may be redoing some of them. We’ll hopefully have them by Thursday night. I ended up taking over the Pd interface because I needed to see it working before I continued with my own work.

I’ve spent hours with Pd creating some odd sounds to accompany our artist. I settled on classic synthesis techniques that were used roughly during the time of abstract expressionism including additive and subtractive synthesis as well as ring modulation. I’m also forgoing the sophisticated sounds common today in favor of the sine, square, and pulse waves used when sound synthesis was in its inchoate stage.

I’m creating an approximation of a square wave using a wave table in Pd. Although it’s possible to create a perfect square wave, analog techniques in the late 50s did not have this option. I’m also using the wave table to generate pulse waves and one other “original” creation. At this point, most values that will change are connected to random number generators, but I hope to replace them with sensor inputs as soon as the sensors are finished.

The other part of my Pd work involves the sampling of Lauren’s voice as she reads statements on abstract expressionism. For this, I’m feeding the samples through a strange comb filter. This consists of four short (less than 1ms) delay lines. The output of each delay line is ring-modulated by an oscillator set at 3000, 1500, 1000, and 500, respectively. This creates a metalic, crunchy sound that I can mix with the pure, unfiltered voice. The filtered output is slightly delayed further to give the voice an ambience. The oscillator values can be changed to produce varying degrees of distortion, but the ratios remain the same regardless of the oscillator value.

The audio samples are not triggered by sensors (because we don’t want to hear the same thing twenty times), but various parameters in the sampler may be controlled by sensor input. I’m also experimenting with reading the sound files to a table and then programming Pd to let me scrub through the audio selecting various starting and stopping points as well as different speeds of playback. I have this working, but I’m not sure that it fits with the project, so I may not include it on this particular piece. The effect is similar to granular synthesis, only on a larger scale, but since this is a recent technique, I can’t really justify its usage.

Things are looking good. I’m excited to see it all come together. I’m also looking forward to what the other teams come up with as well.

Gever continues Bovenschen’s search for a feminine aesthetic in The Feminism Factor with a survey of feminist video works. After pages of lengthy description of video works by Chenzira, Millner, Mendieta, Rosler, and Braderman, Gever concludes that there is, in fact, no discernable feminist aesthetic. I believe this is for the best. In my admittedly limited exposure to feminist discourse, I have seen two themes that frequently seem to be in opposition: feminists vying for equality with men, and feminists attempting to distinguish themselves from men, to present themselves as fundamentally different beings. Within the limited scope of a single article, I would like to explore the implications of a feminist aesthetic myself.

A feminist aesthetic would seem to indicate something disparate from the masculine aesthetic, unless I am interpreting the idea of a feminist aesthetic too literally. What is the “masculine aesthetic” if not all aesthetics throughout history? Gever’s search, like Bovenschen before her, implies that there is currently no feminist aesthetic, which further implies that all other aesthetics must be masculine. With the infrequency of female artists until the mid-to-late twentieth century, this seems reasonable, save for the fact that no one ever attempted to define aesthetics as inherently masculine.

What is to be gained from a feminist aesthetic? A separate feminist aesthetic is an invitation to the very marginalization of which feminism seeks to free itself. It seems counterproductive to try to invent something new rather than joining something existing. Don’t feminists want to participate in the same artistic movements as men? If they invent their own aesthetic theory, they will remain fundamentally different from the rest of art and will be easily restricted to an independent position of negligible importance and visibility.

This brings me back to the question of feminist goals. It appears that if women want equality, they shouldn’t attempt to drastically differentiate themselves from men. Their work should hang side-by-side with that of men, but if their works are described as “feminist”, critics will be able to apply a standard critique without truly seeing the work itself. If feminist art is easily classifiable, one can critique it with a one-size-fits-all formula. If, on the other hand, feminist art doesn’t differentiate itself with a pointless label, critics will be forced to judge each work on its own terms without gender providing an already available critical methodology. To be fair, this isn’t a criticism of a hypothetical feminist aesthetic per se, but of any artistic movement, that accepts any sort of label.

From the examples that Gever provides, it seems that the feminist video works aren’t necessarily feminine, but are simply excellent video art. Maybe a feminist aesthetic isn’t necessary—maybe women of the twenty-first century are free to create works, display them, and receive critiques based on the work alone. If they desire to isolate themselves from the rest of the artistic community, they have the opportunity. However, I feel that it is much more interesting if they are seamlessly integrated without rigid gender distinctions.

This is hilarious.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/apple_unveils_new_product

Sweet - I’m going to see Matthew Barney’s “Drawing Restraint 9″ in Kansas City on Friday. I’ll probably have a blog post about it later. I really wish he would release his material on DVDs. I’ll probably have a blog post about that as well.

Check out the link below if you’re interesting in seeing it. It’s playing for at least a week with advance ticket sales. $8.50. Not bad.

http://www.tivolikc.com/

Thanks to Kevin for this amazing car chase. This driver is insane. Check it out.

I found this hilarious video on YouTube. It’s basically a fake commentary for the trailer to Matthew Barney’s film “Drawing Restraint 9″. It’s unbelievably funny if you know Barney at all, but it’s still probably pretty hilarious if you don’t. Enjoy.

My team met again today (March 2nd) to discuss the project status. Muhammad is confident that he’ll have the car moving by Monday - Kendra is going to spend some time getting the canvas ready and fabricating the car’s body - Lauren has researched abstract expressionism and is going to record some vocal samples - Aaron is working with the sensors some more - I’m writing some Pd code and generating a lot of strange sounds. Overall, it looks like we’re in great shape for March 12th (the due date).