C.Torres Art

waterproof strand of 250 UV lights were segment-able, allowing for a much easier install. Among the great news is that each of the component lights operates at 6-12V which makes a fully Arduino-controlled installation feasible. :)

So, current status.

Lights have been constructed

. (64 lights) Photo to be posted soon.

Decided to use a Max/MSP to Arduino firmware for easy interfacing and control of lights for prototyping.

Tested infrared and pressure sensors. (Work great!!!)

Developed a MAX external that will allow me to program animation frames given triggers (sensors)

What remains:

Construct light array. Decide on animations. Program sequences to triggers.

Password Retrieval

2011-06-10T06:40:00.001-07:00

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Password Retrieval, Vinyl

A situational aesthetics project.

Visual Language :: Camouflage, Postcards, and Greeting Cards

2011-06-10T06:35:00.001-07:00

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Colorblind, Acrylic on canvas

This piece aims to address the visual language of camouflage with soft organic interlocking shapes. Camouflage is distinct in that it follows tesselated patterns that often conflict between the disambiguation of positive and negative space. Complementary colors where used to further distinguish this effect as well as lose the functionality of occlusion.

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Frida and a Chango, Vinyl on concrete.

A satirical expression of Cinco de Mayo celebration in the US.

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Faded, Vellum.

Many times, words or phrases become lost or less used with changes in our environment. Often times, these phrases can be categorized as greetings, formalities, or daily interactions. These pop-ups attempt to reinstate these forgotten words, but through the subtle shadows comment on its removal from our daily interactions.

Control Structures

2011-06-10T06:14:00.001-07:00

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Iluminacion - Final Animation Project - Cel Animation

2011-03-15T18:27:00.001-07:00

Cel animation with digital inking. Story about the eternal struggles of the sun and the moon. Based on the concept of duality (similar to ying and yang) from Aztec mythology.

Project Proposal : Motion Sickness

2011-02-25T12:29:00.001-08:00

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Motion_Sickness.docx (16 KB)

Popocateptl e Iztaccihuatl Animation Short

2011-02-22T11:30:00.001-08:00

Interdisciplinary Work: Motion Study (illumination edges)

2011-02-10T23:48:00.001-08:00

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Response: Understanding Media : The Extension of Man || Marshall McLuhan

2011-02-10T19:30:00.001-08:00

Introduction + Challenge and Collapse

The passages seem to predominantly center on one specific idea - how is it possible to be able to distinguish local and global implications simultaneously. McLuhan gives several examples (and at times draws a little too heavily from the metaphors) such as the doctor diagnosing the patient, the man exerting tremendous energy for water from a well, the increase in production from slave labor, cars, etc... McLuhan makes a convincing argument, namely the soley the artist is able to remove themselves from the effects of new forms and stimuli and look at the global picture, but at the same time he implies that non-artists are incapable of being drawn in the newness of a innovation. This problem, according to the introduction, is particularly imposing due the recent explosion of digital meda and technologies that have attained another level of interaction past the electrical-mechanical and what can now only be referred to as the Dark Ages. Interactions are becoming increasingly rapid causing the interval between execution and evaluation to become ephemeral. With this falls the introspection of one's actions culiminating into what it elegantly portrayed as the equivalent of a mindless zombie.

On some levels I agree. Yes, techonology is advancing at an incredibly rapid pace and only recently are we beginning to study the implications of these technologies to the public. Yes, I agree that the artist is usually more prone to identify this evil doing and bring it to the attention of others. But no, I do not agree that the artist is the sole individual that is able to bring this to attention. This is a bit of a contradiction, partly due to the fact the word artist as defined by McLuhan is:

The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his action and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.

My main counterargument against this view is this implication that the artist must do something (write a book, produce a theatrical production, or embed images on the street walls) to further their acknowledgements of the unforeseen implications of technological advance. Rather, in the act of producing a work, are they not contributing another technology to the world. Is their idea not novel, represented uniquely, ubiquitous? What stops an artist work from adding to the converging circle? Does an artist look at the implications of another artist's works?

I believe this question is left unanswered in these passages, leaving the artist as a being able to "sense ratios of the psychic and social outlook" but unable to move past that. McLuhan touches softly on the subject, mentioning that artist write " the history of the future for the present." Oddly, I feel that translates that all an artist can do is stay connected to the past (in this sense, the time past the immediate present) to gear for the future. It makes me hesitant to say that art should expose more people and create more artists (robot production imagery runs through my head), but then what are the implications of such an idea???

Feeding Time : Animation Short

2011-02-07T23:40:00.001-08:00

5 Artist with Interdisciplinary Works

2011-02-04T01:12:00.001-08:00

Camille Utterback

Unititled 5

mixture of interactive art and painting media

Text Rain

mixture of semantic meaning and interactive sculpture

Scott Snibbe

Tripolar

representation of chaotic mental states visualized using magnet pendulums.

Central Mosaic

used fractal (mathematical) patterns with computer vieion derived video loops

Daniel Rozin

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Wooden mirror

Taken from an OU course on Computers and Processors

Mirror #6

Demonstration of how visual angle and mirror effects present reflections.

Maria Sester

Moved settlement-

Works with Xrays and worked with security professionals to research.

Access

Light social sculpture dealing with security concepts

Leonel Moura

Lbot works

Autonomous painting robot, AI and art'

Swarm sculpture

Ant algorithm (biological processes) sculpture

Reflection on “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

2011-01-28T13:10:00.001-08:00

I attempted to read the first paragraph of this essay and found it to be a word-cruncher. Each sentence described such a complex thought that I wondered if it would be possible for the author to deliver in what was to follow. I decided, before continuing to read the rest of the paper to research this “Althusserian visual ideology”, but more importantly this reference to “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”

I completely agree with Althusser notion that “we are always subjects…constantly [practicing] the ritual of ideological recognition.” I find that art history has indeed shown this notion true, especially the transition into modern art. This reminds me of the Picasso portraits, where the notion of who was being portrayed on canvas was not necessarily the perceptively equivalent individual, but the artist themselves. Going into texts such as Relation Aesthetics, there has been a continuous trend to incorporate more of this ideological recognition in art pieces and installations.

Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” on first glance makes mention of blackbirds in seemingly unrelated stanzas. Upon closer inspection, the poet’s intention can be seen as looking at the same blackbird from a series of perspectives. Upon further inspection of the Art & Discontent article, the author is going along this same route, arguing that aesthetics can be interpreted in a variety of different viewpoints and the role of the artist is to allow these viewpoints to become evident to the observer.

Examining my own artwork, I find that it leans more heavily towards Viewpoint #10: Content arising from participation in a specific iconographic tradition. Most of my artwork comes from heavily saturated warm colors – a color palette that is common in most parts of the border. In fact, as I examine the typography and visual organization of graphic design work I have done, I realize that often times that work bares similarity to the typographic norms of Mexican business advertisements.

This paper reminds me of a psychological condition known as grapheme synesthesia that makes individuals perceive letters as having color. The color associated with the letter can ironically be traced back to the color of the refrigerator magnets that they had from their childhood. In the same manner, when the author talks about “unacknowledged parts of the visual ideology of the cultural mode” is draws me to the same notion of the effects of grapheme synesthesia. Often times, the best way to bring into recognition this effect is by going in contradiction of it, similar to what Dadaist movements achieved in the early twentieth century.

There is one point made about the disparity between artists and critics and the supposed mutual exclusivity of “aesthetics, cognitive, and practical [faculties].” I honestly believe it depends on the artists to acknowledge whether a work is intended for display. Much like Louise Bourgeois explained in her interview, if the piece does not speak to you, it does not speak to you. The intrusion of the artist in the form of written or verbal supplements adds to the complexity of the ‘visual supplement’ presented. Juxtaposing these two elements divides the amount of cognitive insight that can be achieved. I believe this to be a psychological solution. Why make a person experience dual task (of incorporating a visual supplement and written supplement) as opposed to them developing their own observation and afterwards comparing and analyzing it to that of another.

Untitled

2011-01-27T22:30:00.001-08:00

Hey everybody,

Just posting a bit of the progress I've made with the Interactive Matrix Display. A large part of the project is waiting for materials, but the electronics behind it is relatively tame, so I have posted a couple of conceptual sketches.

I was able to acquire the fluorescein chemical from a river studies company. Apparently, the chemical is used to dye river systems and check for flow and contamination. This translates into a relatively small amount of dye (10 mL for every gal, roughly) and it produces an amazing effect. See video :)

So, after careful deliberation, I realized that the fluorescein has to admirable properties. It can fluoresce under the proper condition very large containers and it is able to create very intense and aesthetically pleasing flow patterns, however this is ephemeral. The circulation of water through either filtration or a pipeline to some water source would be outside the budget of the project. Hence, I have decided to use the apriori property: container lumination.

I have decided to use these PVC jars

that I found at a very reasonable price. They have the stability to endure holes and wires and such; plus the are relatively easy to transform into some other assembly than the one I have drafted further below. As the diagram says, I will be making about 64 modular lights from the water+fluorescein mixture and a UV Leds.

I plan to finish making the modular lights by the end of the month.

The more difficult part will be wiring the pieces to a MAX7219 chip, which I have done before, but on a smaller scale. Once this is wired, I need to code the serial input (translating what I want each light to display) and then make some UI so that I can easily change the image displayed.

I will be connecting proximity sensors and pressure pads to be the input mechanisms for the matrix display. To be decided still.

mein Kampf-kissen (Intro to Animation; Project II)

2011-01-27T22:18:00.001-08:00

Turk: 2010

2010-12-08T23:49:00.001-08:00

Social Sculpture : Fall Quarter 2010 : Ricardo Rivera
Final Project: Turk
Stanford University

placeholder: pics of robot

Recap: The main goals for this project was to capture \interactions that are unique to the new social culture that is being created from web communications. Many times, we find ourselves bringing high-level social gestures to the system-level abstractions. Whether it be linking through webs of friends, "writing on walls", or skyping with a friend studying abroad, a key element prevents this interaction from being interpreted as "real", but rather is given a class of its own.

The project breaks that class by bringing concrete physical interaction from the virtual space. A robot was constructed from the repurposed remains of a toy remote car, and Arduino that handled electronic functionality with remote signals, a laptop that hosted a Java server that relayed OSC (open sound control) signal from a MAX/MSP/Jitter patch and a Flash front-end. The flash site was uploaded to a web server. The robot could thus be controlled through any computer connected to the the same network router.* A live webcam feed was connected to the robot and streamed through means of the media server on Justin.tv.

The laptop display also handled OSC receiving of messages from the user.

The current flash interface can be found at:

http://stanford.edu/~ctorres7/TEST.html

The current interface currently contains an instructional, however from preliminary tests with the robot, this will be removed. In order to bypass network control and see the full interface of the robot (unconnected) hit CTRL+ENTER on the homescreen. A button will be placed for easier access.

The robot was set up at Stanford and was allowed given a test drive. Almost immediately, we found that a question of a virtual person or body within the confines of a photography free zone is constituted as a person. Many bugs and further functionality need to still be worked on, but I hope to further explore this area with this art piece.

SKIP TO 2:15.

* Consideration were made for world-wide access to the robot controls, however this required port-forwarding and MAC cloning of university internet configurations that we protected by multiple firewalls. Testing will be done to reconfigure a more accessible network connection to provide full access. Perhaps even a network card from a phone 3G service..

Project Redesign

2010-11-14T21:13:00.001-08:00

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video-2010-11-14-20-55-31.3gp (5728 KB)

So, last week I realized I did not like the direction this project was going. I felt that much of the interactivity capable by the MAX/MSP/Jitter language was being limited by computer vision problems and inaccuracies. Instead, after seeing ACCESS, "an interactive installation that lets web users track anonymous individuals in public places, by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system" by Marie Sester, I decided to do a redesign of the project.

I particularly still wanted to keep this concept of virtual space and idenitity (two places at once) and the idea of interacting physically from a distance. This project will deal with constructing a "robot" from a toy remote car which will be receiving OSC messages from a server locally hosted on my computer. The robot will have a camera for guidance and an LED ticker that can be used to display messages.

I feel this project has a lot of potential due to the anonymity of the beholder and the forced interaction of passerbys. It really test the bounds between the 2 dimensionality of social web applications to a less human exterior, but far more human interior of a human-guided robot.

Goals for this week:

Redesign UI and get FlashServer running for video feeds.

Design robot. I am thinking to make it out of cardboard similar to the architectural topographic models (the ones that look like level sets) to get past the robotic stereotype (chrome and lights).

Untitled

2010-11-08T16:16:00.001-08:00

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video-2010-11-08-16-11-30.3gp (1887 KB)

Silhouette Series & Colors Idea w/ Presentation mode

2010-11-03T23:40:00.001-07:00

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Thought the superposition could best be modeled by series.

Outer columns and singular. Inner columns are merged.

Max Silhouetter Refined

2010-11-02T01:05:00.001-07:00

Used cv.jit mean and got the absolute difference. Colorbias was added to alter color. Multiplied by two, concatenated together. Having trouble with patcher for text. Still working on voice recognition.

Me and a waterbottle.

Paint Spill Lamp

2010-06-08T14:31:00.000-07:00

I finished it!! It comes in two colors!!! lol

Founding of Arizona

2010-05-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

Made for the Bringing Home the Border event , this piece takes into account the story of the founding of Tenochititlan, current day Mexico city, where a eagle was devouring a serpent. In this composition, the roles have reversed in a new hostile environment.

Digital Language Lab Mural

2010-05-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

Made it for their tenth anniversary. Misspelled the University motto. lol.

Raza Day Mural

2010-04-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

This 40"x150" portable mural was painted in the space of four hours with the help of high school students at MECha de Stanford Raza Day Conference. The mural still needs a final run through to incorporate shading, stylized color selection, and a thumb on a diploma, but the basic intention I feel was captured.

It should be done in time for An Art Affair. :)

RGB Wheel

2010-03-09T13:53:00.000-08:00

Final Project : Art & Electronics

After some many hours of soldering and couple of burnt fingers, the final project is complete.

The paradigm that occurs with skill acquisition has several distinct characteristics; most notably the effect prior knowledge can have on the form, content, applicability, and belief in a hypothesis. Anything barring the title of Traditional is subject to this paradigm. As such, these different standards inhibit further progress and innovation. This project aims to address this concept of the traditional, the very core of the influence of prior knowledge, and turn it on its head, in the head.

Automatically, the piece is expected to produce a aural cue based on the identification of the piano keys. Instead, the system attempts to present the spectrum as a compilation of its three component parts - red, green, and blue.

Each pod has binary wiring to account for the over 21 input streams and reduce them to a manageable eight to allow for the Arduino microcontroller to send the proper serialized signal to the RGB matrix.

Each key represents a certain intensity of a component color and "mixes" with the others to produce yellow (high red, high green), teal (high blue, high green), magenta (high red, high blue), and every color in between.

The modular design is an abstraction of the Aztec sun calendar.

Larkin Mural

2010-03-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

Made over the weekend with Larkin dorm in Stanford, California. The RAs are the foosball players.

Formaldehyde Uterus

2010-01-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Fetus!!!

So this was my first Art & Electronics piece for class. I made the fetus out of some dinky clay I had, pierced its center with solder to act as an umbilical cord, and embedded a couple of transistors and IC chips into half its body.

The base was crudely constructed from some foam core and painted with a circuit board-like design. The electronic component is a couple of warm colored LEDs attached to a potentiometer that controls light intensity (there is a knob on the side that makes it almost glow)

I wish the glass was a bit more beaker-like, but alas the cafeteria cup had to do. I was experimenting with different ways to catch that light and found that a salt solution (technically a suspension which allows the dispersion of light) captures the light and gives this piece an ominous effect.

The overall idea was to comment on the turn towards a biotechnological emphasis on industry. The piece is intended to stimulate a person's reaction to the intersect between human and synthetic devices.

Sun Mural @ Home

2010-01-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is a special mural created for my mother's Christmas present. It is located on the back porch area and once GoogleMaps updates, I'll post the aerial view.

The design was inspired from my parent's collection of suns and moons amassed from their travels in Mexico. They certainly have a fascination with the sun and moon duality, and this mural serves to acquiesce the inner Nahua in each of them.

The moon will be part two of this operation.

AP Art Portfolio

2009-06-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

Mural @ Lee & Beulah Moor Children's Home

2009-04-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

Can't believe it we pulled it off. Americas HS Art Club in collaboration with an NHS project pulled this one off in one fast-paced 10 hours.

The design for the mural was centered on one of the main activities of the main gym - rock climbing. The composition consists of the Franklin mountains and the many flora and animals that inhabit the region. A couple of silhouettes hang precariously off some of the rock-climbing walls.

The entire mural was completed during a Judo Competition that they were having in the gym.

The children's home is licensed by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services as a General Residential Operation and Child Placing Agency. It is a member of the Texas Coalition of Homes for Children and the Southwest Association of Homes for Children. Please donate to the shelter here.

Torres, Cesar A., Dorian Clouser, and Americas Art Club. A Rock to Hold on to. 2009. Acrylic on Concrete. Lee & Beulah Moor Children's Home, El Paso.