Digital Arts and the Department of Art are proud to present HUNG…

Digital Arts and the Department of Art are proud to present HUNG Keung. HUNG graduated from the Swire School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (MA in Film + Video), UK. He was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM), Germany (2001-02). Currently, he is a PhD candidate at The Planetary Collegium, the University of the Arts in Zurich, Switzerland.

In recognition of his international achievement in new media art, HUNG was awarded a prestigious President’s Award (2002); Deutscher Akademicscher Austausch Dienst Scholarship, Germany (2002) and Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, US (2005). In 2004, HUNG founded innov+media lab, focusing on new media art + design research in relation to Chinese philosophy and interactivity.

HUNG KEUNG BLOATED CITY | SKINNY LANGUAGE
In HUNG’s Bloated City | Skinny Language, the viewer appears on two screens surrounded by a myriad of fragmented brush strokes. Characters read the viewer’s outline and aggregate around their body. Responding to the slightest movement, the characters fly gradually from one screen to the next, from one image of the viewer to their mirror image. The artist  prompts viewers to reflect on how they can locate themselves in their universe (Heaven + Earth) and relate to the notions of Dao ?.

PUBLIC TALKS + LECTURES
April 5 | Artist Lecture| Harrington Room (Jaqua Center) at 6 pm
Sponsors: Computer and Information Science, Arts Administration Program

April 6 | Gallery Talk| 240 JSMA at 6 pm. Sponsors: Cinema Pacific + JSMA

April 7 | White Box Opening
24 NW1st Avenue, UO White Stag Block, Portland
6–8 pm; remarks at 7pm

EXHIBITIONS
JSMA: Where To Come From? Where To Go?
Video Works by Hung Keung
Showing from April 5th to June 19th

White Box: Bloated City | Skinny Language
Showing from April 5th to May 14th
Sponsors: University of Oregon Portland Programs
Additional support from Ace Hotel

Let's Talk About Feelings: An Exhibition of Student Work from the BFA Digital Arts Program in Portland

Gage Hamilton, "Angry Deer-Man Screaming with Chainsaws in the Nude," mixed media, 2011.

Adopting the theme of Watch Your Mouth for winter term 2011, the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts Digital Arts BFA Program in Portland opened their latest exhibit, “Let’s Talk About Feelings,” on February 4, 2011, Floor 4R of Portland’s White Stag Block.  The exhibit will be on view and open to the public through March 11, 2011.

Digital Arts Professor Ying Tan, who is Portland’s Digital Arts Program instructor for the winter term,  commented that the show is of a “very different theme with a wide range of media.”  The work in the show addresses site specific pieces as well as involving viewers as co-creators of the artwork.  Professor Tan noted that the students “successfully employed digital or physical materials new to them in…meaningful ways to enforce the conceptual ideas in their own work.”

Seen on the floor of the exhibit: do you walk over it or stop and read?

“Let’s Talk About Feelings” exhibited the work of students in the Portland Digital Arts Program:

Brian Aebi     Amy Chan     Braeden Cox     Gage Hamilton     Matthew Pfliiger

Andrew Pomeroy    Steven Robinson      Lauren Seiffert

Tanya Tracy     Chris Wilson     Zach Yarrington

Professor Tan lauded the students as “spontaneous, experimental, and equipped with a broad set of creative skills beyond digital media.”    The following are images of the students’ artwork along with their own comments about their work.   The show will remain up until March 11, 2011.

____________________

Zach Yarrington

Zach Yarrington, "I Always Never Said That," chalk on blackboard, mixed media, 2011

…..My installation was constantly changing throughout the exhibition.  The chalkboard piece is titled “I Always Never Said That.”  [The piece was] being displayed in a building full of creative individuals…my thought was to leave it open ended to allow others to contribute to it.  The eraser and chalk were left out intentionally so that one could change it if they chose to do so.  Inspired mostly by song lyrics, the different attempts are meant to react to each other as well as the people in the White Stag.

_____________________

Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson, "Frustration,"photograph & mixed media, 2011.

Frustration:  Prior to the show, the main emotion I was feeling was frustration due to the fact that it’s not common for me to deal with the topic of feelings.  I was struggling to come up with a concept for the show so I decided to work with my feelings of the moment, and use a grapefruit as an outlet for my frustration.  I photographed myself smashing, cutting, and mutilating this grapefruit and presented it in a way that shows the mutilation over time and all of the action in one still image.

____________________

Tanya Tracy

Tanya Tracy, "Aspirations," mixed media/photographs, 2011.

Tracy’s comments, while brief, spoke of the group’s overall effort to put together a show in “about a week and instead of working on a common theme we decided to do pieces based on our own interpretation of  ‘Let’s Talk About Feelings’.”  Her series of photographic portraits of maniquins some with vibrant hair, others blank and softly without features, makes us question how aspirations are interpreted individually.  What within these nameless, and rather faceless, motionless forms prompts a sense of aspiration?  It is a grouping of somewhat similar forms, however, each is unique in posture, gaze, portrayal…even the frames while far from ostentatious remain individual.

____________________

Lauren Seiffert

Lauren Seiffert, Untitled, yarn, mixed media, 2011.

Detail of Lauren Seiffert’s work:

Seiffert's crocheting, in detail.

Let’s Talk About Feelings can be interpreted in so many ways.  I wanted to respond in a way that would help me further explore my interest in the bodily systems, yarn, crocheting, and how these three elements, to me, are interrelated.  My piece is an assemblage of organ-like units loosely based on the body parts that can effect your feelings.

____________________

Steven Robinson

Steven Robinson, "Submit Feelings Here," mixed media, 2011.

My work in the BFA show this year has centered around the visual vocabulary of antiquated gaming and internet culture.  My piece…does not fit into my body of work at all.  Still, I like how it matched the show.  [Here] on the wall is a wall-mounted vinyl psychiatrist done in fluorescent green lines, to somewhat look like a halftone.  In the space where the psychiatrist is looking is a fine leather chair, with a clipboard, pen, and some paper on it. On the floor lies an office trash can.  If you sit in the chair, you are confronted by instructions, written on the wall facing the chair.  They instruct you to write your feelings down on the supplied pieces of paper, and then to crumple the paper up and throw it away into the convenient trash can. It then thanks you for your time…..[This is] mildly a commentary on the temporary and pointless nature of talking about feelings in today’s age of Facebook and Twitter.  We’ re inundated with useless information, and those of us who spend a good amount of time on the internet tend to zone out on the pithiest comments, which get lost in the vast sea of fast information.  How often do you remember a friend’s depressing Facebook status update, a day later?  How often do you remember what you yourself wrote, a month later?

____________________

Andrew Pomeroy

Andrew Pomeroy, "Informatives," mixed media, 2011.

Corporate strategies and machinery in America today comprise a very fascinating beast.  One that is often more concerned with the logistics of human interaction within its own ranks than any other factor in the whole scope of its business.  Unfortunately, it is a difficult task to control and shape communication among large numbers of people into form-fitting a highly complex business model.  The “corporate culture” resultant of these efforts, is, thus, renowned for its byproduct of bullshit.  This is for anyone who’s ever had to read a corporate handbook, watch an employee training video, or recite company slogans with a straight face.

____________________

Matthew Pfliiger

Matthew Pfliiger, "Body Gestures," mixed media, 2011.

“Body Gestures” has over 40 silhouettes of people on black and white vinyl.  When I thought about the show title, “Let’s Talk About Feelings” I imagined all the body language people communicate to each other without actually talking.  So, I wanted to capture many body languages and display them in a simple and clean design.  With this I did not invoke one central feeling with viewing the piece.  Instead, many emotions can be felt and explored within one piece.

____________________

Gage Hamilton

Gage Hamilton, "Angry Deer-Man Screaming with Chainsaws in the Nude," mixed media, 2011.

…To be honest, I don’t really like it when artists offer up explanations for their work….it makes the work less interesting to me.  [This image] was, in part, a reaction to some of the critiques and responses I had been getting to my work.  No doubt anger played a large role.  Some people asked if it was a self-portrait because of the beard, physically, it’s not but I guess it was emotionally….[everything here] was chosen for a purpose.

____________________

Braeden Cox

Braeden Cox, "I Still Don't Understand It," mixed media, 2011.

I created this digital piece in my own abstracted way of interpreting the show’s title…..I am using the shapes in the piece as representations for different feelings.  It is mostly done using a digital collage technique and then I incorporated my own hand writing in it for a digital and traditional combination.

____________________

Amy Chan

Amy Chan, "Grey, Green, Red," watercolor, 2011.

These watercolor paintings are about the numerous connotations that can be found in an image, especially in what is being depicted as well as how it is being depicted.  With these three works I allowed my color choice to guide me in deciding what sort of image fit with whatever color I was using.  The grey gives off a lonely, ghostly feel, the red is more related to a stronger romantic feel, and the green/blue has a sort of lost, lifeless feeling.  I wanted to create images that expressed a relate-able sentiment or feeling that relied on the combination of color choice and image choice.

_____________________

Brian Aebi

Brian Aebi, Untitled, mixed media and photographs, 2011.

I am slightly addicted to cliche photography.  I think I just enjoy it.  It is like a guilty pleasure, relate-able and nostalgic.  I used interesting and expressive forms and shapes in 3d to become her emotion in these candid captures of a girl.

As a final image, Lauren Seiffert, at work crocheting for her installation……



Studying Motion with New Technology

Members of the 3D Imaging and 3D Animation courses (ARTD 471 & 472) have a new tool at their fingertips. Starting this term, we have a motion capture system set up on our Eugene campus. The technology, most often used for 3D character animation and in the video gaming industry, works by recording 34 points on the human body from 8 different cameras, and at 100 frames per second per camera. Through careful data analysis, each captured segment of motion is then converted from millions of X/Y/Z data into a 3D skeleton. This moving skeleton can be attached to 3D characters that students in the class are making, so the real human motion-capture movement is carried out in a virtual 3D body.


3D student Brett Cicarello suits up for a motion capture session.

Though this technique is heavily used in the entertainment industry, the powerful tool can also be used for creative experimentation and technological re-purposing. For example, can you image the human body as a digital synthesizer? Or could the motion of a body be tethered to something otherwise ephemeral, such as a cloud or a digital sculpture? There are many possibilities and we are ready to explore them.


The 3D skeleton imports into 3D Software (Blender 3D) as a skeleton.

Currently John Park (Digital Arts faculty) is also crating works with this tool on conjunction with dancers and electronic musicians as a way to press the tool usage out of industry and into creative practice. This work is being carried out by the art collective Harmonic Laboratory.

To get a sense of the fluid motion capture, here are some videos of capture sessions:


And another…