record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00171
Thesis Title
Landscape Denatured: Digitizing the Wild
Author
Eric Kabisch
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts with a concentration in Arts Computation Engineering
Year
2006
Number of Pages
120
University
University of California, Irvine
Thesis Supervisor
Simon Penny
Supervisor e-mail
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Studio Arts - Arts Computation Engineering
Languages Familiar to Author
English
URL where full thesis can be found
e.fluxt.com/thesis/
Keywords
electronic arts, geography, visualization, locative media, image sonification, generative music, interactive art
Abstract: 200-500 words
This paper presents motivation and documentation of four technologically enabled artworks. These artworks explore ways in which digital technologies impact society and culture, focusing particularly on the impacts of information technologies on physical and cultural geography. A framework is provided for analyzing these works of art. This framework addresses the impacts of technology as a three-part cyclical process that includes (1) sensing elements of the environment, (2) analyzing and creating narratives from the captured data, and (3) the propagation of these methods and representations back into the world. SignalPlay is an interactive installation that employs wireless sensors to control a spatialized sound environment, allowing participants to explore a distributed collaborative system. Unexceptional.net is a web-based application for visualizing and sonifying network, database and player information of a multi-modal online role-playing game. Sonic Panoramas utilizes image sonification, immersive projection and camera-based machine vision to allow users to create an interactive musical experience from panoramic landscape imagery. Datascape is a periscope-like system for the visualization of geographic information. This system allows users to explore a 3D topography and musical soundtrack that are generated from geospatial information such as marketing demographics. In addressing the impacts of digital technologies on culture, these artworks employ the very technologies being investigated. Through the production and exhibition of this work, I hope to engage the public with these important issues and to help shape the ways that technological methodology embeds itself in our world and in our daily experience.