Final Week of DDC07

Although we spent most of our final week working on our projects we also got to meet a few great artists for some last-minute inspiration.



We met Graham from MediaShed who talked to us about free media. He also told us about a project called Gearbox designed in order to allow people to share ideas and instructions on how to do cheap and free projects within media.

To read more about MediaShed go to www.mediashed.org

To read more about Gearbox go to www.gearbox.mediashed.org



Later that week we met Andy from The Yes Men who talked to us about identity correction and fooling the corporate world.

To read more about The Yes Men go to www.theyesmen.org

Experimenting with G.R.L.

On Wednesday James and Evan (and another Evan who is working with them) visited to teach us about their Graffiti Research Lab:



To learn more about them visit: www.graffitiresearchlab.com

We made paint bombs and had our volunteer suicide bombers (note: this is a play on words and no students died) launch themselves at the side of the building:















To see more from our day with G.R.L. go to: www.flickr.com/photos/ddc07

Steve Lambert Visits

On tuesday Steve Lambert came to visit our classroom and made some of his trademark signs with us:




See more of his work here: www.visitsteve.com

Here are some of the signs we made:







Then we traveled to Times Square to share them with a larger audience:















You can see even more pictures of our day at our flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/ddc07

Street Art Walking Tour with Ryan Watkins-Hughes

Ryan talks about the use of stickers.















And the use of wheat pasting.















Tahj takes a closer look.




















Layering art.















Non-traditional methods of creating street art.

I think that the place were we put our work was too public and by that it got stolen or taken down. we should had put it in a place were not so many people could see it. I be leave that what we did was illegal. Also i think is kind of rood and disrespectful for other people to be placing their work on top of other people's work unless their is no were else that they can put their work.

Questions

• Some places where I think you can put art work in the public are on brick walls, poles (light poles, crossing sign poles, & lamps) and on the sidewalk.
• I don't think its a good idea to draw, write, and/or paint over another persons art work. I feel this way because the person that did the original work might be trying to get a point through someone and if someone comes and cover it up with there work that point is not going to get through.
• Some styles of art are graffiti, using stickers, posters, billboards, and morals.
• Art VS. vandalism: I think art is expressing yourself in a form of paintings, graffiti and/or pictures. However, I think vandalism is expressing yourself on peoples private property.
  

Question&Answers...

Q:Where can artwork(street art)be place?
A:street lights, train stations, car/buses mostly anywhere.

Art vs Vandalism: Vandalism causes destruction/property without any concern of the public.
Art on the other hand makes a place better for the environment also showing off their work.

Q:People tagging over other artwork,what do you think?
A:People tagging over other people artwork is a disgrace because their ruining the person artwork unless ,they have permission from that person.

Sound Box in action

Here we were hanging the sound box on the pole. Many kids past this way. There was one kid who saw what we were doing and decided to try it. He followed the steps and hopefully heard the message....

Free Telephone

This invention took a lot of sweat, hard work and a lot of creativity from my partner and I and my corresponding co-workers . This invention is suppose to be a free phone. We invented this because some people actually think that things are free in this world so we just wanted the public to know that it is not. When you crank this machine up, the message that you hear is "Ha, Ha, Ha, you thought I was free". As we went up to install the "Free Phone" in the telephone booth, we had some technical difficulties. We had to find a way to the phone on the telephone, without having it fall or have someone take it and run. So we took like at least 20 minutes to install a wire through the phone connecting it to the phone booth so that it won't mysteriously leave the booth.

A Global Warming Massage

This is basically a sound box that is able to record and already has a recording inside for the public sayings. Don't litter and help prevent global warming. The reason for this massage is because people, Society, and the world it self is lacking the acknowledgment is happening. We were all reminded about the problem with global warming through out the project that's why we decided that topic.

Sound Box

This sound box was decorated to attract kids. We put it in a park where mostly kids go. The message sent out to these children is to have fun in life and live it to the fullest. We chose this message so that children can experience things without looking back and regretting what they didn't do in their lives. It was the perfect place to let kids know this message.

Sound Box Project

Our project being documented.
This is our project being display to the public.

These are the buttons we use to make our rain sound.

Our sound box.

We had a workshop on how to create sound boxes. Cassandra and I had pair up together and created our very own sound box which we had recorded the sound of rain. The reason why we choose rain is because we tried to find a way to catch the people's eye. Since we had a hot week last week we decide if we made a poster on how the weather had been and tell them that its better to rain than to sweat then maybe it would attract the people to come and try our sound box project.

Street Art with Ryan Watkins-Hughes

Today we got an overview of a street art from Ryan Watkins-Hughes. Artists he discussed included Michael De Feo, Karen Walker, Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Swoon. Other projects he showed can be found here.

Below is an image from one of Ryan's projects - Shop Dropping.


One term that came up several times today is "meme". This originates from a book by Richard Dawkins called "The Selfish Gene". You can read the chapter about memes here.

Graffiti

To me graffiti is a drawings or words that are scratched, painted, or sprayed on walls or other surfaces in public places.

Graffiti is a passion for art and elution with different colors on the streets. the art represents who you are and what name you go by.

Sound Boxes / Physical Computing

In creating our sound boxes with Jenny, Carmen, and Mouna, we learned both how to construct a circuit from scratch and how to hack an existing circuit. Below is a picture of our breadboard in progress. The breadboards are very handy because they allow us to prototype rapidly, adding and removing components without having to solder.


When opening up the voice recorder key chains, we got to see a PCB, or printed circuit board. A PCB is used when your circuit is fully developed and you know you won't be making any additional changes. They're found inside of every electronics product. Below is an image of the guts of the voice recorder.



This is where the soldering began. We added our own reed switch to the contacts for the playback switch on the circuit board so that the recording could also be activated by a passing magnet. We also removed the connections for the battery and replaced them with wires that connect to the breadboard so that the circuit can be powered by our hand-cranked generator.


And Voila! A two-day intro to physical computing and basic electronics.

If you guys are interested in learning more about this stuff, there are some good basic tutorials on ITP's Physical Computing website, including ones on breadboards and soldering.
The Make magazine blog has many stories about Physical Computing type projects. Also, Instructables is a great site where you can learn how to build things. Instructions for the Personal Power Plant, a project by Jenny, Carmen, and Mouna that's related to the sound boxes, can be seen there.

Pictures from sound box workshop

Ms. Pacman Music Video - The Go! Team

A music video inspired by the Pac Manhattan team.

Sound Projects

Yesterday we started our self-powered sound system projects with Jenny, Carmen, and Mouna. Below are links for the sound-related projects that Mouna showed us.

1. Earworm Assault Devices
Weapons of Mass Distraction, 2005
http://www.fursr.com/details.php?id=84

2. Sky Ear
Ussman Haque
http://www.haque.co.uk/skyear.php

3. Jeff feddersen
Earth Speaker
http://www.free103point9.org/mp4/earthspeaker.mp4

4. janet Cardiff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Cardiff
Sound walks

5. The breathers
Desearch and Revelopment
http://rd.labbs.net/breathers.htm

6. Anti-Adverstisment adgency
Portable Sound Units
http://antiadvertisingagency.com/category/projects/portable-sound-units/

street art 2

Graffiti is Art

Street Art 2

Intervention and Graffiti

Intervention is the act or fact of intervening. Interposition or inference of one state in the affairs of another..or when u try to stop something the way its going

Graffiti is like a work of art...people sometimes use it to send out a message to people or for a memory of someone who died... it might be also used to make out community more creative...

Meanings

Graffiti-art,a way to express people feelings through a artisic way.
Public action-to riot for something that the community disagree about(protest).
Public intervention-When the public/community opposes any reguarding threat or otherwise.
Street art-A artisic way to defy goverment ,express feelings,or perhaps mark their name.