nickshah15+Fall+2014+New+Media+Digital+Arts+Page

=Nick Shah =



**Major:** Biology **Minor:** Mind-Brain Studies

Experience with Computers/Software: Basic, I understand Microsoft Office, Paint, Adobe etc but not much advanced topics! Experience with Arts: Let's just say my 10 year old cousin is better than me when it comes to art....

Something interesting about me: I love to dance hip-hop and breakdance!

Artistic Interests: Drums, Dancing, Graffiti, Nature



1. Numerical Representation



2. Modularity



3. Automation



4. Variability



5. Transcoding

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__ Photoshop Exercise __

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

__Original Pictures__



__Edited Picture__

__5 Presence/Absence Examples (Original then Edited)__

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5 Masking Examples

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 * “After Effects or the Velvet Revolution” by Lev Manovich Response **

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After reading this article, I was still a little confused, as this was a fairly dense reading compared to what I’ve read in the past. That being said, I definitely found the reading very interesting, as it made me think of current-day art in a new perspective. As a student who has essentially grown up using technology every day, it is very hard to fathom how my daily life would be without such technologies. Not only do we use our cell phones or laptop pretty much every other minute, but even the programs we have on our computers are so commonly used that we don’t even think about how our computers would run without them. I definitely took all these programs for granted until I read “After Effects or the Velvet Revolution” by Lev Manovich. It was not until I read this article that I realized how easy things have become with technologies such as those utilized in the program After Effects. As the author stated, “the data [used to be] was stored on bulky magnetic tapes about a foot in diameter; to find the data from an old job was a cumbersome process” as well as other problems. Now, however, people can edit pictures, videos, audios and other media with the click of a button.

I think that the most interesting section in this article was the "Media Remixability" section. This section was also the easiest for me to understand, as I could relate most easily to it. Every music video, trailer, flyer, poster etc never utilizes one aspect of art technology. If it did, it would not catch any attention from its intended audience. Instead, they will combine various art technologies to not only make it more interesting to read but visually and artistically pleasing to the targeted audience. As an example from the article, motion blur is used in computer graphics. I have seen this example numerous times where the artist is purposely blurring the surrounding environment to place emphasis and focus on a central image. Another example that Lev Manovich pointed out was how flat typography is animated to make it look fluid-like instead of just looking like a series of screenshots in time put together. I see this utilized in every cartoon show or cartoon movie, because the directors are making the characters in the show/movie seem real by making them look like they are moving like normal people/animals.

As a biology major, I have pretty much taken all sciences courses at GWU. I don't think I've taken a history class since high school! As expected, when I initially read this article, I had no clue what the Velvet Revolution. Therefore, I decided to read about the Velvet Revolution and learn what it was all about. After reading about it, I feel that the comparison between the technological transition in the field of arts and the actual revolution over communism is not a fair one to make. I do see that in both cases, there were no physically violent movements that caused a change. However, the history behind the two (the reasons for wanting a movement) were very different, which is why I do not think they can be compared so closely as the author has done.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the reading as it was an eye-opener to how complex and new the field of “hybrid” media is!

__ Questions: __

1. Do you think that it was right for Lev Manovich to compare this transition in art to the Velvet Revolution? If not, do you think it could be compared to another revolution or should it be its own event in history?

2. In what direction do you think Lev Manovich sees hybrid media going (in other words, is the 21st century the end-all-be-all of hybrid media or is there more change to occur later on)?

3. Do you see a similar "Velvet Revolution" happening in another field of art outside of hybrid media?

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 * The Poetics of Augmented Space by Lev Manovich Response **

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Lev Manovich's article, "The Poetics of Augmented Space" is a very interesting article that delves into the field of augmented reality (commonly referred to as AR for short). Augmented Reality is the a combination of pictures/videos of the real world with computer-generated sounds, videos and graphics which enhance (or "augment") the viewer's ability to perceive the work of art. I agree with Lev Manovich's statement that augmentation is not simply a technological advancement in society. Instead, it is an idea and cultural practice that can be applied to a variety of aspects in life (such as objects, humans or other aspects) and will continue to apply to newer and newer fields. I thought Ms. Schraffenberger's (who is the magazine article's writer) response to Lev Manovich's article was also very interesting and I agreed with some of her views. For instance, I agree that augmented reality cannot be limited to the visual sense, because we view the world in more ways than just out vision (we also understand the world through hearing, tasting, touching and smelling). One of the questions that Ms. Schraffenberger asks Lev Manovich is "If we look at contemporary AR and compare that with other forms of new media, what's special about it and what isn't?". I believe the biggest aspect of AR [augmented reality] that makes it special and different from other forms of new media is that fact that it integrates both real-life and online aspects of something. In forms of new media like movies and TV, the person watching this is automatically pretending to be situated in the location in which the scene is occurring. The actual scene may be occurring far away from them (for instance, if someone is watching a documentary about Africa while sitting in their living room in the US), but these forms of new media enable the viewer to virtually transport to that location. However, augmented reality presents an entirely new situation. In augmented reality, the viewer is able to combine the views from a virtual world and the views from their actual world and understand the art in a completely different way. Another question that Ms. Schraffenberger asks Lev Manovich is "What is actually augmented in Augmented Reality? What else can (we imagine to) be augmented?". I believe that the reader's perception of the new media becomes augmented, and changes entirely from if the reader were to view something simply generated from computers (and not partially from the real world and partially from a virtual generator). As I stated before (and which Ms. Schraffenberger refers to as well), there are a number of aspects that can be augmented separately from space, which include objects, humans, activities etc. Overall, I really enjoyed both of these articles, and I have definitely gained a broader knowledge about Augmented Reality than before these articles. It will be very interesting to see the progression of augmented reality (as well as augmented space) as technological advances in the world continue to change our perception of the world.

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