Thesis Proposal

            For my thesis piece I plan on coding an interactive music program that can be controlled with a simple MIDI keyboard in real time by the viewer. The program will interpret notes played on the keyboard and plot it out in a radial fashion, which on a 360 degree completion, would come out as a certain shape. The shape is wholly determined by the user through interaction with the keyboard (what notes he plays and for how long). I have already posted sketches of the shapes I would like to work with as well as a new shape that I am experimenting with (shown below).

            The core idea of my project would be the visualization of sound, or rather, using sound to create visuals. I am going to focus on static images however because as I have said earlier I want to create physical shapes from sound, each one a personal ID. The user will draw with the keyboard and form his own custom shape that is different from anyone else’s. I would like these shapes to be displayed on a projector so each users piece is featured for a brief time period. Another component to this installation would be a series of digital prints comparing different genres of music and different applications of sound shapes (I hope to have at least three distinct radial patterns to choose from).

            Currently I am still in the coding phase and will be delving into Pure Data, which is a program specifically designed for music visualization (as suggested by my design professor Atif). I have just purchased a MIDI keyboard and I will begin testing with it as soon as possible. I realize that there is a lot that can go wrong when it comes to computer programming so that is why I’m starting as soon as I can. 

Thesis Journal Entry

I haven't really been keeping up with this journal but I've definately gotten far with my thesis project (at least the programming portion of it). Already Ive managed to map out a song in a radial pattern and create different shapes as pictured below:

 

 While this is good so far I would like to take it further by separating the high and low frequencies and if possible the middle frequencies and giving them their own spectrum. The result (I'm hoping) would look something like this:

And then eventually colored:

 

As of now these last two are just sketches and I have to work out sizing and coloring issues as well as figuring out a way to program the computer to map real time data from a MIDI keyboard. However I feel I'm heading in the right direction and I just need to work out a few things.

Here are some more images from other songs I've sampled:

Zoomed out for scale.

Zoomed out and sped up to reveal each frequency bar.

Resume First Draft

Here is my very sparse first resume draft. Any suggestions as to what I should add would be helpful.

Welcome Back Show Review

            Although there were a lot of pieces at the welcome back show in the Mason Gross gallery the pieces that really caught my eye were the two digital prints by Shane Whilder in the main room. Both depicted the same digital landscape in a pixilated mosaic-like pattern with the left one rendered in dark tones and the other in lighter tones. To me it looked like shots of night and day in some digital landscape. The landscape itself was very empty with just some rolling hills going off into the distance. No other shapes except for these rolling hills and the faded wash of color above, which I interpreted as a sky. They’re simple pieces visually but that’s what I like about them.

            They remind me of early 3D video game landscapes during a time when developers had to make full environments using barely emerging technology. To do this developers would first create an infinitely empty flat plane and then wall off the area that the player would interact with. The player wasn’t supposed to see this infinite plane of nothing but sometimes there were glitches where one could find himself outside of the set boundaries and wander around.

            As a kid this happened to me here and there and whenever I would see this it gave me this eerie feeling. Once I remember actually walking out into this nothing for a good hour and not seeing anything all the while having this feeling of loneliness. It was both creepy and strangely captivating. That’s what I felt like when I saw Shane’s pieces and the more I looked at them the more I felt that sense of infinite nothing.

            The piece that bothered me the most was next to Shane’s and it was the installation done by Raphael Ortiz that included a large poster and TV screen that continuously played “Brother Can You Spare A Dime?”.  I’ll admit that when it comes to Graphic Design I can be nitpicky but I usually don’t let it sway my opinion too much. However the poster Ortiz has designed was, as I saw it, not designed well. There were multiple cases of squished text and text that had terrible resolution, in fact the images even had poor resolution. I don’t know if there was a point being made with the design but if there was it went over my head because I was just focused on multiple problems I had with the poster.

            As for the idea of the piece I could see what Ortiz was trying to say but it seems to fall flat. Maybe it was because of the images of elephants raining down from teabags or the music playing over 1920s depression images or it just could have been the design flaws but I just couldn’t get behind the message the artist was conveying. I kept coming back to the piece trying to see it in a different light but I couldn’t bring myself to feel compelled.

Thesis week #1

I've decided that my thesis exhibition will be an interactive piece (and I'm set on making a musical keyboard that projects visual images as you play it but we'll see how that goes). In fact, after doing some research into interactive design, I'm beginning to like the idea of becoming an interactive designer. As I think about it interactive media is something that I've always been interested in but didn't know it. When I was younger it was video game design, creating characters and environments or writing up some code for some well known video game company. Through my three years of college I felt drawn towards web design especially the kind where the user can interact with the web site.

It was the idea of immersion. A painting can be beautiful but in the end its a static image. You can walk around and even touch a sculpture but it can't respond. That's what draws me to interactive design because you can set up a program to respond to your actions or create an animation that can be both static and in motion. Although I don't know how I'll go about doing it I can see myself working in this media.

As for my project I've looked around and this video (that I've found so far) best describes what I'm trying to accomplish: Clavilux 2000

Catherine Weiss is a painter/photographer still trying to find herself as a budding artist. Finding inspiration from her personal life Catherine uses both photography and painting to explore different ranges of emotion. Always trying to push herself into unfamiliar territory she works with a number of mediums and techniques to express her style of portraiture and abstract art.


Max Churak: Tell me about yourself. What are you studying here in mason gross?
Catherine Weiss: My name is Catherine Weiss. I'm a fourth year student majoring in Painting and Photography.

MC: What classes are you currently taking?
CW: Right now I'm taking Advanced Painting, Photo III, Thesis, and Abnormal Psychology.

MC: What got you started in art?
CW: Art's always just been something that I have always done since I was younger. As I got older, and continued with it, I decided that i wanted to take it further and go to college for it. I wanted to see how good I could get and where I could take myself with art.

MC: So you knew coming into college that you'd want to major in art. What prompted you to pick Mason Gross over the other art schools?
CW: Well I had heard that it was a good school for art from teachers in high school, and I wasn't looking to go too far away from new york so it was really great that they accepted me.

MC: Tell me about your work.
CW: My work up until now has mainly consisted of portraits. After I got through with the base classes, I wanted to take my try at painting people since it was not something that we got to do very often. I looked at alot of Alex Katz's work in making my portraits since I never painted the figure by itself. They were always in a type of setting, just like Katz's paintings.

MC: You mentioned earlier you were heading in a more abstract direction with your paintings. Any particular reason why?
CW: Yeah. I want to try my hand at abstraction because it's a new challenge for me. Not saying that I have perfected anything that I have been doing, but I'm looking for something new. I'm always searching for something, in painting. It may be, because I don't feel like I have found my place in it yet...I'm not too sure, but I think that more abstract paintings might effect a greater audience than a portrait, and I just want the feelings and emotions I put into my paintings to reach a bigger audience than possibly just the person in the set portrait.

MC: So you do both photography and painting. Which one are you planning on pursuing after graduating? Or maybe you'd like to try both?
CW: I would like to try to pursue both. In my art, both take from each other. I love both, but I figured that photography was great in the sense that it is more modern and I might have more luck in a photography career. That aside I want to be a studio artist. It would be a goal of mine to hang work in galleries in new york and other cities, so I'll see how it works out! I'm not too inclined to teach, but if it came to it, I would just for the fact that I would be able to continue with my own artwork. That's really all I want in the end.

MC: Alright so when you do work on a project whats the starting process?
CW: Alot of thinking. I always seem to get stuck since I don't just dive into the process of painting. Photography comes alot easier to me since I also shoot photos of people and people at events. Painting is definitely where i struggle. I usually spend alot of time beforehand gathering inspiration. Like I'll try to go out to the city to see some art, or walk around and see what my friends are working on. I always work from a photograph though. So if I'm ever extremely stumped I'll search the web for images of things that are interesting to me in my life at the time.

MC: Where do you usually find inspiration for your work?
CW: Alot of places, but mainly my emotions for people. Which I suppose is where a part of my wanting to paint people came from. Everything that I've ever wanted to do artistically comes from an emotion that has to deal with a person in my life. I don't always have the most fluid explanation about that, because it's confusing to me, but that's where my inspiration comes from.

MC: How have you enjoyed studying at Mason Gross for the past 3 years?
CW: I've loved it. I think about it alot how glad I am that this is what I get to do...for school! It's also a challenge, but I feel that I need to  be challenged because I have a hard time motivating myself. I've realized that I've really learned alot, so I'm happy.

MC: What are your thoughts about the upcoming thesis class and exhibition?
CW: I'm nervous and excited. I don't have too many thoughts at the moment, which is where the nerves are coming from.

MC: Any preliminary ideas for a thesis project?
CW: No actually. I just want it to be bigger than what I've been doing in the past.

MC: Will you incorporate more abstract paintings in your thesis project?
CW: Yes. If I do end up sticking to portraiture, they will have to somehow have to be abstracted in a way for me to be happy with what I'm doing. This is something that I have been struggling to do for a long time and i would love it if I could successfully debut this side of my work during the exhibition.

MC: What have you learned after four years of art school?

CW: I've learned that art is alot harder than I thought. The whole issue of intention and grabbing inspiration when it needs to be called upon is tricky. I've also learned though that I am always improving. I don't always notice it until the year later when I reflect on what I've done, but I've gotten alot better, and I guess that's what I've learned...to just, keep going with what you are doing.

MC: Who is an artist that you admire?
CW: I'm going to have to say Andy Warhol.

MC: What is it about this artist that interests you?
CW: Everything. I am interested in everything that he's ever worked on. Wether it be his art, or his involvment in the new york music and fashion scene. It's all things that interest me, and I would love to be able to do as much as he did. It just seemed like he did what he wanted and...that's what I love about him.

MC: What are your hobbies outside of art?
CW: I like to write and see live music. I feel like that's a hard question to answer for some reason since whenever anyone asks me about a hobby my whole life, I've just answered with "art". But my life is pretty much consumed by different types of art wether it be painting, photo, music,  and fashion.

MC: As an artist what is your goal?
CW: I've always just wanted to relay something to others. I'm very much for expression and leaving things behind to be remembered by. I want to reach out to people through my work. I want them to feel something, or remember something, or wonder about me. Anything. I just want them to think. If something I create can make someone wonder about something, that would make me happy. Even if it's just as simple as "Who is that person in the painting?"

MC: Would you say that being here at Mason Gross has helped you reach this goal?
CW: Yeah. Taking art to this level of study has made me really think about what I want to be doing. Like, is art just a hobby for me? No. I think it's something that was just inevitable for me to end up doing. I love it. So I don't know if I've answered the question that well, but I'd say yeah, Mason Gross has helped. Or helped keep me on my path to wherever I'm going atleast.

MC: So final question: what advice would you give to the younger college kids majoring in art?
CW: Stick with it and work hard, and if you can't find inspiration or need help, talk to the teachers you have access to. They're really smart and helpful I'm really shy and learned that almost too late.