Laws of simplicity

The worlds leading designer, John Maeda, created a template for simplicity.

Law 1 - Reduce
"Less is more" The less stuff there is, means the more impact you'll have. This is true, if you have a white page with a black dot on it, you will notice the black dot, but if you have a white page with loads of dots on it you're unlikely to notice that one original dot. It's just less eye catching.

Law 2 - Organise
If you can get everything organised, your work rate and quality will improve tenfold. For me i find writing lists helps... I love being able to tick things of when they're done.

Law 3 - Time
CBI who are the biggest employer in the UK have said that students who came to work after they graduated lack, Time management, are illiterate and have no manners. I know i'm quite bad with time, i leave things to the last minute thinking it wont take as long as it will.

Law 4 - Learn
The majority of what you learn at university and will keep with you, is learnt informally, from peers.
In the art industry collaboration is key, find your strengths and then surround yourself with other people who can do different things which you can then incorporate to strengthen both partys work.
Don't be afraid. Make time to play with stuff, ideas and finding out how things work. Try and soak up as much information from as many different places as you can.

Law 5 - Differences
"Simplicity comes out of complexity"

Law 6 - Context
This is about what you say, how you say it. You could have a good idea but have it in the wrong context, it wont make a big impact, possibly because it was aimed at the wrong audience or your background knowledge is wrong. You just have to be careful when you're doing your research that you know what he best context is for your purpose.

Law 7 - Emotion
72% of people in the UK are afraid of emotion. Males tend to be worse at showing emotion than females. In art, the best pieces are autobiographical and emotional. If you are passionate about what you are doing you can get away with more stuff. If you care about the work or theme, it should be able to hold enough emotion to make a connection with an audience.

Law 8 - Trust
Trust yourself and your judgement. Have confidence that if you think its right then it is. Make sure you believe in it.

Law 9 - Failure
Games theory suggests that games are created to make you fail. That its part of the thrill. You don't give up if you fail on a level.. you try again, learning from your mistakes and trying to make yourself better.
Experimentation is key... Most things need 4 or 5 proto types to work out faults and make them better.

Law 10 - The one
When its right, you'll have that gut feeling and you'll just know.

"Forget about the past - The futures all that matters"

VJing

Vjing is very collaborative it uses a seemless mix of abilities to create the final product. It peaked in the naughties but it had been around for a long time before that. Artists used to stick slides together then add coloured oils to it. When the projector was on the oils would then move about. I love the idea of doing the work like this rather than having it all computer generated, it just adds another dimension to it. Its like a visual journal, where every page uses a mixture of techniques and it just makes it feel quirky and unique. I love the use of different media and also having the audience interaction, where they can be a part of it and control it is so interesting.

I found this wee video which gives a bit of an overview of VJing. And how the creative process works.

Vjing is made up of 3 elements

1 Sound

The majority of VJs create the visual aspect and then make sound that fits in with it. 

2 Up to date technology

VJs use a variety of technology, VJ hardware can be split into categories, Source, Playback, Mixing, Effects and Output. 
Source hardware generates a video picture for example, video camera and video synthesizers the VJ can then manipulate this.
Playback hardware plays back an existing video stream, this could come from VHS and DVD players.
Mixing hardware allows all these streams to be combined. This is a video mixer or special VJ software.
Effects hardware allows you to add special effects to the stream.
Output hardware, is how the final product is displayed, this could be via video projector, LED display or a plasma screen

3 Artistic understanding of visual space
VJs create a visual sound. Which has psychological aspects. It mixes the senses because you are able to view the sound. VJing often takes place at events such as concerts, nightclubs, and music festivals. In these spaces/events people sometimes take mind altering substances. The VJ sets can then add to this.

Internet art

We use the internet as an everyday object, and it’s amazing to think that it is still growing and that we don’t actually know how much more progress will be made on it. The internet is both a personal and public place, this makes it very hard to display art in it because nothing is truly private. The internet is a free floating signifier, which means that if you find something, you don’t know what the context is and you as a viewer can decide what the context is.

Definition of internet art

1 The computer has become a new media (a new set of media format)

2 To design a digital artifact is to design an experience. Digital design should not try to be invisible.

One of the main aspects of internet art is about being personal. The internet allows us to put our personal behaviour out in the public, for example on networking sites such as facebook or on blogs, where we can write our own opinions. This information usually isn't edited, making it more personal and therefore more provoking if it is hard hitting. Our whole relationship with internet has changed, we now live in the web as well as in real life, it's part of our identity.With the likes of social networking sites, we feel that it is necessary to constantly be sharing and viewing each others information.

Stelarc (an Australian performance artist) brought performance art into the web he embraced the personal element and being able to create a relationship between himself and the audience. For one of his pieces, called ping body, his whole body was wired. Small electric currents were sent into his nerves system via the wires. These currants were created by the net. Data from around 30 internet domains was used and the variation of the ping values controlled the motion of the body. which made him create involuntary movements. He danced for 24 hours. People talk about how someday computers will take over. This was a computer takeover. Here the net determines what happens to the person rather than what the person determining what happens on the net. The machinery completely created the choreography of the body. The body became a "controllable machine".

Another one of Stelarcs pieces was to implant an ear onto his arm. After creating a "virtual arm" which was controlled using sensor gloves, Stelarc wanted to create a third ear. It's a surgical construction of a full sized ear, which can transmit the sound that it hears. I think it is so strange, Stelarcs work really is provoking. It blurs the boundaries, between art and science research and makes you ask questions. Personally I wouldn't want an ear on my arm because its not what your used to seeing. Although i would like to see how it feels and how it works to have 3 ears, and be able to hear sound from a different level.

Stelarc

Three things to remember...

When creating a piece of art, there are three main things to remember... It doesn’t need a narrative, it should be aesthetically beautiful and it should be emotionally crippling.

Moving image doesn’t need to have a straight narrative. The story doesn’t need to be obvious. Although it can have a meaning behind it. An audience should have to work hard to understand what is happening. Some say that the author is dead. And that the audience should be left to create the story and be involved in it. Overall the final piece will interpreted differently by every person, so why not present it in a way that they will find more enjoyable? People like to feel like they are a part of something and belong.

The work should be aesthetically beautiful. This can take shape in different forms and sometimes the “beauty” can be horrible but be aesthetically grounding. A piece art should provoke you, it should make you think about what you see and how you see it, it should make you look at an object and wonder how it works and why it works and all the pieces that come together to make it do that, and why we use it in the ways which we do. Good art should make you question everyday things it should be presented in a way which makes the known unknown.

The piece should be emotionally crippling. It should stop you in your tracks and just hold you there for that split second, it should provoke an emotion, whether it be anger or sadness or whatever. Art should make us question our position in the world.

Christian Markley is a sound artist who uses the excess sounds that people don’t want. He uses turn tables and assembles the music together. Markley is also a film maker and sculptor. The main theme of his work always stays the same, and it’s about music. One of his films was of a guitar being dragged along roads in America on the back of an old pickup truck. This piece caused outrage and was even discussed in the Whitehouse. After seeing it I didn’t understand why people would be outraged but after hearing what it was representing, I understood better. Markleys work provoked outrage and it made people think “Have we progressed?” “How can a guitar being destroyed cause more anger than a black person being killed? And what does this show about us as a society? How could an object have more worth than a human?”

Bill Viola is video artist. In class we seen clips from one of his films "the passing" in which he filmed the birth of his child and the death of his mother. i can't really understand how he could film the death of his own mum. I'm wondering did he do the editing straight away or did he wait until he had come to terms with the death? or maybe because they knew she was going to die they had come to terms with it before it happened? I don't know whether to think Viola is a genius, or heartless. I know the film does have the balance of life and death because it has the child being born, but i just feel that because its real footage of a woman actually dying its horrible. Because we can relate to the themes in the work it is hard to detach yourself from the it. In Hollywood films, there are births and deaths, but they are acting,  its not real and you know its not real so you can detach yourself to a certain extent. 

Willie Doherty is a video artist. His work is similar to Violas because he uses similar techniques such as slowing the timing, having a constant focus, and the theme of his work, which is being on a journey. I seen one of his films “Ghost town” in the Ulster Museum in Belfast. It was strange. The room the screen was in was pitch black and the screen was huge. I remember we stood and watched the whole thing, waiting for something to happen, or for something to appear on the road. It was hard to leave the room because the piece almost stopped you. It kept you there, waiting to see what happened. I can’t explain it but the piece did leave me feeling a bit funny, probably a combination of the quiet dark room and the huge screen, with the loud, single voice doing the narration in a type of drone. When I came out of the room everything just felt far away.