Where to begin?...
I'm a little behind in the blogging game, but that isn't to say that I haven 't been composing, exploring, and organizing my thoughts. I've been thinking about what I should enter for my first entry and I decided that I would post the first thing I thought of when presented with the first assignment.
A couple weeks ago there was a viral video that appeared on several of the blogs I read regularly. The video, linked below, shows YouTube user dAlvarez3182 create an image of James Dean with dice and then alter the image by means of flipping the dice to create a new image of Marylin Monroe.
This got wedged into my mind for several reasons. First, it was quite impressive. Secondly, it really started to make me think how computers create, store, and display imagery. The images made in the video are quite literally created from numbers. The numbers displayed on faces of the dice form the images by constructing patterns that mimic dithering. Finally, it really highlighted the importance of audience. For instance, without the human eye would these pop culture images simply be rows and columns of varied numbers of the number set 1-6?
From this, questions of compression of information, memory, storage, and "the user" started to arise..
Beautiful. It makes me think of Vic Muniz, who though not being a very interesting artist to me, does make a very serious effort at playing visual games.
ReplyDeletethis artist is using the numbers on the dice to represent tone, instead of number directly, but it work well. I can only assume that he also used a computer and programming to map out the grid in advance in 6 tones.
So he represents a 6 tone numeric/tonal grid that references digital art and uses a digital tool as a support instead of as the primary source of the image.
I only wish I new the reason for choosing his subject matter as the use of Dean and Monroe is an obvious tropes that often have no relation to what is being done with their image.