information arts - sm2222

Information Arts - SM2222

Class Introduction

What is information?

What is information arts?


Information Arts

Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology,

Stephen Wilson


Information Arts

Biology: Microbiology, Animals and Plants, Ecology, and Medicine and the Body

Physics, Nonlinear Systems, Nanotechnology, Materials Science, Geology, Astronomy, Space Science, Global Positioning System, and Cosmology

Algorithms, Mathematics, Fractals, Genetic Art, and Artificial Life

Kinetics, Sound Installations, and Robots

Telecommunications

Digital Information Systems/Computers


infoArt

InfoART Pavillion at the ‘95 Kwangju Biennale in Korea, organized by Nam June Paik and Cynthia Goodman

Artists included

Nam June Paik, Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Scott Fisher, Perry Hoberman, Paul Earls, Paul Garrin, Steina Vasulka, David Rokeby, Tsai Wen-Ying, Peter d’Agostino, Edmond Couchot, Benjamin Britton, Grahame Weinbren, Luc Courchesne and Jean-Louis Boissier

Image source from, http://www.rutt.com/rvi/media_cd.php


Information Design and Visualization

Understanding Information

Playing with Information


‘Reality’ has been portrayed and represented in Digital Media (SM1001).

Digital media is presented as streams of digital codes (0 and 1) which we name ‘Information’.

Information can be processed and manipulated through some digital ‘transformations’.

The stream of information can be read as a number which affords mathematical operations.

Or it can be read as a string of ‘symbol’ which is similar to

a sentence in a language.


But the question is,

Why aren’t we aware of this?


WYSIWYG


We perceive and manipulate the information through some kinds of abstraction.

Document, photo, video, sound track, etc.

MS Word, Photoshop, Quicktime, WinAmp, etc.


Thanks to the graphical user interface (GUI) and desktop interactivity and SM2203.

We can work on the abstract models of text, image, video and audio, etc. without knowing much about the stream of information.


What are we going to do?

Look into the abstract model, the 2D image in particular.

Surface the information stream as number.

Study the properties and behaviours of number.

Re-work the image manipulation processes as number transformation.

See what can happen.

That is where creativity is.


And at the same time, we’ll

Understand the perception process of visual stimulus.

Study the use of visual elements in communication.

Practice on presenting complex information.


Some examples

information arts - sm2222

Documents

information arts sm2222and

information arts sm2222but

information arts sm2222what

stream of information

information stream

complex information

behaviours of number

number transformation