Tara's+Student+Page

Augmented Reality Description The purpose of my augmented reality piece was to capture an ephemeral moment and encourage imagination. I used ten portraits, which capture family members across four generations. The photographs range from black and white polaroid images to colored film. Through Photoshop, I re-imagined and re-contextualized the images. The effects range from practical (re-coloring and repairing damages) to whimsical (making a young boy float or making someone’s hair grow rapidly out of control). The final piece was strung up on a hemp string and held with clothes pins. This decision was partly aesthetic and partly practical, as leaving the original photos physically unaltered was an integral part of my vision.

What I love most about this piece is its intimacy and simplicity. It encourages the audience to think about the person in the portrait, while allowing them to get lost in the playfulness of the piece. If this were part of a gallery installation, I would try to display them in multiple levels – avoiding the linear timeline that the clothesline inadvertently creates. I think that on a conceptual level, I was influenced by my background in figure drawing and painting, which has been my concentration since high school. I have always been most interested in capturing the geography of the human face, and augmented reality takes that to the next level. This piece has inspired me to think about future projects, particularly the concept of combining new media elements with hand-drawn portraiture.

__**Response to the AR(t) Magazine Edition on AR**__

Earlier this semester, I attended GW’s Annual Shakespeare Lecture. The topic that year was “Play Going in the Networked World,” and it addressed the opening role of virtual gameplay in theatre. Dr. Rowe, the guest lecturer, was specifically excited for the future of augmentereality and its ability to draw a larger audience towards a topic that has typically been regarded as “high arts.” It was the first time I heard an academic embracing augmented reality, and for many people in the audience, it was their first time //hearing// about augmented reality.

These series of articles published by AR(t) magazine reflect the same excitement for augmented reality as a tool for creative and reflective play. The uses for augmented reality range within each article: from museums to spaces to even the human body, each artist tests the limits and applications of AR. But what each article has in common is the ability to bridge unlikely communities through a shared experience. Like the town of Spijkenisse, which used AR to recreate lost buildings and cultural heritage, many artists are aware of the way in which AR brings people from all age groups and backgrounds together.

However, I think what always excites me most is the ability to bring something back to life or catch an ephemeral moment. As I’ve talked about before (and probably too much), I’ve worked at installing AR simulations in museum galleries. I made a gif of Duchamp’s //Nude Descending,// bringing her back to life again, and I digitally refurbish an ancient Chinese reception hall. I could talk all day about the educational advantages of AR in museums, as many of these articles have already done. But what I find truly fascinating is technology’s ability to create a magical moment in your real world, in which you can bring new life to something forgotten or damaged.

What’s also interesting is that each AR piece presented in this magazine piece seemed to have an //awareness// of it’s connection to our current social media climate. In the article written by Meredith Drum, she argues that AR is a way to re-direct our flow of information in a consumerist culture that often controls our information content. I feel like this message is especially important post-election, as we are talking about the dangers of “fake news” and what many are deeming “virtual echo chambers.” We have a tendency to not tolerate different opinions, instead isolating ourselves in these bubbles of similar opinions. AR has the ability to do both things: provide fact-checks to biased information or create more echo-chambers, in which we see only what we want to see.

Of course, virtual interaction is an entertaining way to draw in younger visitors to an art museum or get people talking about Shakespeare. However, I’d argue that technology serves a greater purpose in narrowing the gap between people and critical thinking. What virtual reality does for people is force them to work for their own knowledge, and therefore it encourages that searching for meaning is valuable. Whether it be through architecting or exploring a virtual world, artists are testing the ways in which they access information and relate to art. Most importantly, I’d argue that technology does not isolate people from shared discourse and community. Rather, it encourages users to share ideas, explore others’ perspectives and even challenge their own attitudes.

__**After Effects Manovich Response**__

As a visual artist, video editing and production has always seemed very unapproachable to me. And while, as Manovich points out, motion graphics make up the majority of our visual language now, I never thought about learning After Effects or applying it to my portfolio. Every time I’ve had to deal with video editing, I always approached it with hesitation and reluctance.

To sum up my experience with video editing, it comes down to three different experiences: (1) self-producing “music videos” with my friend when we were thirteen and (2) editing a monologue with on-screen text for an English assignment. The third experience came this summer when I worked on several short video projects for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And while I never touched After Effects animation, I had to quickly learn the vocabulary of the program, and I was expected to produce wireframes for my team.

I also was involved with some bigger-budgeted vide projects, which required an out-sourced production team, and it surprised me to see the raw footage before editing. I saw that an expensive camera and tech team could produce video that was only slightly better than my undergraduate photography training, and that it was the editing process that really brought the raw footage into something professional and impressive. Bringing forward these experiences to my reading of Manovich’s article, I see the ways in which multimedia has affected my personal style choices and preferences for media and art.

I agree with Manovich’s opinion that “media remixability” makes modern video so captivating. The ability to reimagine video footage as something hybrid and complex allows us to integrate text and 2D images, transforming media into something new. When I think about successful play with text in movies, I often go back to the Wes Anderson style of cinematography. From his earliest films to his most successful projects, Anderson does not hide his play with typography. Words on the screen often help move the narrative along. It also creates a distance between the audience and the film, never allowing the viewer to forget that they are watching a movie. This style is so intriguing to me because it’s not about video editing as illusion, but rather as a definitive stylistic choice and a reminder of video as art.

Similarly, I think that the concept of bringing 2D images and drawings to life is an incredibly intriguing concept. What Manovich calls “media montages” can include typographic compositions, hand-drawn animation and live action scenes within the same frame. I can remember the first time I watched the 1988 //Who Framed Roger Rabbit// or the 1996 //James and the Giant Peach,// I was so amazed by the combination of “real” and “unreal” in a fictional world. Since then, Claymation and mixed-media movies have always fascinated me. As I mentioned in class, I am interested in bringing some of my illustrations to Photoshop and After Effects and seeing where that takes me.

While video is still not something I am very familiar with, it is interesting to think that I can finish this typography project and potentially bring these skills to future projects as a Fine Arts major.

Cinemagraph Final version Version 4 - motherhood reimagining Version 3 - addition of scythe, necklace and earring, raven, play with contrast of background Version 2 - clouds background, couch, grass under couch

SCREENSHOT - detail of face Sassy Lady Project - Version 1 Exercise #1 - original image Excercise #1 - found image (//Boy with Frog// by Ray Charles. 2008) Excercise #1 - found image Subtraction Exercise #1 - original image

Image reference to Homework #1