New Media Art - Blog

Explore Rhizome.org and the art they list here: http://rhizome.org/announce/

Reception in conjunction with Rose Marcus and Andy Meerow: Café

What is self-portraiture in the expanded-field? A charcoal drawing is one example, but this research will probe more direct and physical forms of self-positioning. The artists will review the supposition that they are working just by correctly moving their bodies around and assess their role as part of a larger body of people helping each other make sense. Together, the creative populace projects bolstered self-images into the void, or the bounty?

"Tide Study" by Ryan James MacFarland:

Charles Bank Gallery is pleased to present Tide Study, a new photography exhibition by Ryan James MacFarland, July 12-August 19, with an opening reception on Friday, July 6th.This will be MacFarland’s first solo presentation at Charles Bank Gallery. In MacFarland’s newest body of work, the artist shows a concern for the seemingly intangible and transitory qualities of landscape.Through these photographs, MacFarland has attempted to interpret and reconcile his own experiences of nature.

Bound, Unbound: Lin Tianmiao:

Asia Society Museum presents the first major solo exhibition in the United States of leading Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao (born 1961, China). Surveying the past 20 years, this exhibition highlights the remarkably consistent focus on women’s issues that is subtly embodied in her work. The exhibition — a series of installations and sculpture with a textile focus — will fill Asia Society’s entire museum space with several new installations and many works never seen outside.

Yogyakarta: 

Five Artists From IndonesiaMarc Straus Gallery will be presenting an exhibition of five Indonesian artists, four of which have not been shown in The United States yet. The show will include paintings and sculptures from Jumaldi Alfi, Fendry Ekel, Erianto, Abdi Setiawan, and Yunizar. This important event brings these Indonesian artists to New York along with their influences and culture. The opening for the event will be on Wednesday, June 27th at 6pm.

New Media Art - Blog

Talk about collecting content such as collecting files, code, images, and sound to use in later work.

The importance of collecting files to use in later work is essential for everyone in this digital age especially journalists, web designers and the like. For video, print, online and photo journalists these days it is doubly important especially since most potential employers want to see a portfolio of work and if you can give them a website with all these different examples of work then that will impress them more.For myself personally I soon found how vital it is to keep all the photo's video's and articles I have done over the course of my university studies as I have used many of them to display in the portfolio websites I have created over the past two years.

The importance of collecting code as a journalist has been perhaps less important until recently, however with the surge in online news publishing if a journalist has the skills to create online news stories and design websites then potential employers are more likely to consider employing them. Having a collection of sound files is also less important perhaps as many sound effects can be found on websites such as www.soundbible.com and journalists do not often have a need for them except occasionally with video journalism making a news story which requires sound effects. As mentioned earlier images are important for photojournalists to keep for portfolio purposes and videos are important for video journalists who require a solid news reel when looking for work as a TV reporter.

New Media Art - Blog

MY FINAL PORTFOLIO:


For my final portfolio I intend to completely redesign my website using a Wordpress theme which I will modify extensively. I will erase my old website and start fresh with a new more professional look which will include my latest published articles, photographs and videos. The theme I want will be minimalist in nature with lots of space on the home page to display my best photographs, it will also have a widget area for me to add a twitter feed and link to my sports photography Facebook page. My new website will have 5 pages called: 'Reuben Franklin', 'Blog', 'About Me', 'Contact Me' and 'Links'. The 'Reuben Franklin' Page will have a drop down menu with three different sub menus called 'Published Articles', 'My Videos' and 'My Photos'. The 'About Me' page will have a spiel about my skills and experience as a journalist and photographer; the 'Blog' page will link to a separate Blogger website; the 'Contact Me' page will have a plugin which will automatically email me peoples messages comments; and the 'links' page will contain links to my favorite websites. I will also install a plugin called Sociable so people can share my articles with their friends and a visitors counter plugin to see how many people view my website. I also intend to activate the Akismet plugin with my API key to avoid getting comment spam. 

New Media Art - Blog

The Game I created is called Parliament House Shootout. I used the free version of Game Maker to make this game which can be downloaded here http://game-maker.en.softonic.com/ The objective of my game is to shoot the politicians as they fall from the sky in front of the parliament house in Canberra.  The cowboy shooter is controlled by tapping the left and right arrow keys to go left and right and the space bar shoots his gun.  As the game progresses more and more politicians fall from the sky and each moves slightly quicker than the last with each one giving the player a higher score when they are shot. Eventually even civilian’s begin to fall from the sky and the games ends if you either shoot a civilian or if a politician runs into the cowboy shooter.

I designed the cowboy shooter cartoon dude in Photoshop and gave him a cut out image of my face. I also gave him a gun and placed him as a sprite and object in Game Maker. I also cut out images of many well know politicians faces in photo shop including Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Bob Brown, Campbell Newman,  Bob Katter, and Tony Abbott and loaded them as sprites and objects into Game Maker. I then created an object in Game Maker called controller_enemy which allowed me to designate when and where the politicians fell out of the sky. I also added a photograph I had taken a few years ago of the parliament house in Canberra as the backdrop for my game. I also added some background music called Yakety Sax which I felt suited the game well.

I also downloaded You-Tube clips of each politician and cut out a small wav. sound file of them using Audacity.  I loaded this sound file into Game Maker and designed it so the sound played whenever the politician ran into the cowboy shooter. This took a bit of time and effort however it added some realism to the game as each politician’s real voice plays when the aforementioned action happens. 
Furthermore in order for me to make this game work successfully I had to learn what variables were and how they operated within the game. For example if y is larger than room_height jump to position random(room_width)-65. Sounds confusing but this basically means that once each politicians face disappears below the screen it then reappears above in a random location allowing for the player to shoot it again, Simple right?

New Media Art - Blog

Talk about your Video Artworks:

My video artworks are a compilation of dirt bike videos I have made by using a number of years of video footage I have collected during all the different occasions me and my mates have gone riding together. With all four videos I have simply added some transitions, such as cross dissolves, fade ins and fade outs to name a few and then simply added music and some catchy pretend sponsor logos to create some pretty cool videos.

The first video I made called Manar Park Supercross contains video footage of my mate Reece and I tearing up the Manar Park Supercross track. For this particular video footage I was fortunate enough to be able to use a mates HD 1080 GoPro camera which attaches to the top of your helmet. I managed to get a number of my mates crashes on camera which made for some cool action shots, including a shot of myself being roosted by Reece.

For my second video called QMP (Queensland Motorcycle Park) my brother and I went to the official opening day of QMP a few months back and we took a fair bit of footage on the day which I compiled into a short video clip. In the video it contains footage of Trials rider extraordinaire Jack Field doing a backflip on a motorbike from the worlds smallest ramp. It also has footage of my brother Ryan riding and Crusty Demons rider Matt Schubring and the Showtime FMX crew like Steve Mini do tricks in the new freestyle park. For this video I used my DSLR which is HD and my parents video camera which is not, so the video width changes in size and quality throughout the video which was annoying but there is nothing I could do about it.

For my third video I decided to go with a mix of all my best dirt bike riding footage taken of my brother and mates, Ben, Brodie, Nathan, Elijah, Dotto, and Aaron. This is my favorite video as it contains all the crashes my mates have had that I caught on tape. The footage is mostly taken on my parents property however there is also a small amount of footage taken on my mates property and on the road. For this video I used my parents video camera which is not HD so the lack of quality shows it this one slightly.

For my fourth video called Dirt Bike Dogs it contains video footage of my brother and mates Brodie and Ben riding their dirt bikes around the MX track at Black Duck Motorcycle Park. The footage has also been sped up slightly to make them look like they are riding faster. I used some commentary for this video and while its only trash talk it made the video more interesting than what it would be otherwise. I also used my parents video camera for this video as well so the video quality is only average.

New Media Art - Blog

Research three examples of Video Art, embed them in your blog and discuss them.



Time Lapse was the first video that came up when I typed time lapse into the You Tube search bar. It is a 3 minute video of time lapsed footage taken from different locations in and around Los Angeles.

The location I liked the most in the video was taken from near the LAX airport where you can see aeroplanes coming into land at the airport.  The aeroplanes look a bit like UFO's as they streak across the sky at light speed creating a cool looking video effect.

The other thing I liked about this video is the way it starts in the late afternoon as the sun sets and then gradually work its way through the night with timelapse footage of different locations before finishing the video as the sun starts to rise.

Cut Copy Lights and Music was the second video artwork I watched. It has a funky soundtrack by Cut Copy as the names states. Basically this is just a video of a chick getting different colored paints poured over her face but the video is reversed so that the paint slowly disappears from her face creating a cool looking effect.

I liked this video artwork for its simplicity while still remaining interesting enough to watch, although I did not like how long it took for the paint to disappear completely from her face. The video goes for 3.37 minutes, I think is a bit long. If this were my video I would probably shorten it to about 1-2 minutes max to allow for people like myself with short attention spans.

Six Minutes of Stuff Getting Destroyed does not sound like much of a video artwork when you first read the title however it was surprisingly arty when I watched it for the first time. My favorite slow motion shot in the video is of the egg landing on top of the mouse trap which snaps down onto the egg splitting it in half and creating a cool slow motion egg white and yolk splatting effect.

I also liked the slow motion effects of bullets slicing through playing cards and wine glasses full of different colored liquids as it created a very cool looking multicolored display of messy destruction.

New Media Art - Blog

FLASH WRITE UP:

For our first New Media Art assignment of the semester we were required to create our own flash art work based around a doomsday theme. My decision as discussed in the previous blog was limited to a rather basic flash design due to the lack of time I had to make the artwork. This lack of time was no fault of out tutors but rather due to the large amount of time I personally spent learning how to use Adobe Flash, having never really used the software before.

Consequently my finished artwork product was too basic to allow for a good mark and only benefited me with a passing grade, which was not entirely unexpected. My thoughts and attitude toward this assignment were subjective and not entirely positive as I often questioned the usefulness of learning Flash during a period where its extinction is entirely plausible due in no small part to the popularity surge in HTML5 and Apple's dismissal towards using Flash in its products.

However despite these dark thoughts I pressed on with the project and turned in an artwork which while basic worked successfully, which I was told was more than could be said of some class member’s projects. 

Once I had finally figured out the basics of operating Adobe Flash it turned out that using the software was not that difficult after all and that all it really required was a different thought process to the one I had been utilizing. This new thought process was structured around a better understanding how layers work and the many different layers one can use when operating Flash. My struggle with understanding layers was rather odd considering I had previous experience working with them in Adobe Photoshop. Anyone who can explain why that is the case to me is more than welcome to do so.