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I learned a lot from my project and my final display.  When I was researching my artist, I had no clue what fractals were or how to use Scott Draves software.  After research and playing around with the software, I learned I lot more than I knew before coming into the class.  I think just doing the final project help all of us research different parts of art.  My projects strengths were the software and being able to actually interact with it.  With that I can continue to create new fractals and make them better than I did already.  Some weakness are a physical object in person that I created.  I drew pictures and sketches but it could have been better.  The software could be the most risky thing because sometimes it doesn’t work and it wouldn’t upload.

I think our guest speaker we had last class was very good.  Kris Krikeby was her name and she had a very interesting way to paint pictures.  She taught us how to make layers with color pencils to help make the colors on the artwork look better.  I don’t think that there is anyway that I can apply the aspects she taught us to my final project.  They just don’t really apply to each other that much.

From my creative display I got a lot of positive feed back from everyone.  Everyone had good comments saying how they liked that I created my own.  Some people suggested make more than one, which I do have more than one visual pattern of fractals.  Some things that people mentioned is just to add more information on fractals and how it applies to my artist and nature which I plan to do. Also what other art I should create that goes along with my artist or fractals.

For the first event I went to was a Department of Architecture lecture.  It was presented by Margarita Jover.  Margarita Jover is founder and principal of the firm ‘aldayjover architecture and landscape. It was based in Barcelona, Spain.  With work in both Architecture and Landscape Architecture fields.  Some main takeaways that I got from this lecture was how architecture and buildings are designed based on where it is located and what the building is for.  Also how many different types of styles of architecture there are and how to implant things into buildings the best way.

What the lecture was about architectural and infrastructural typologies.  What is that? That is transportation networks, districts of heating and cooling, and other types of architectural things.  They said that man-made dynamics are making their way into our life and their influences are forcing our culture to be thought in a different way.  Real life crisis also influence how we create architecture and buildings.

To me the lecture was really interesting.  I think architecture is really interesting when people talk about different building designs and how to build them differently based on location, weather and other things.  There are so many factors that play into building things and it gets very complex and complicated.

The lecture was very much like when we have guest speakers in the classroom.  There was a bigger audience than our classroom and the people that attended were older but it was very similiar.  I think our guest speakers are a little better because they interact a little more but that is because our class is smaller.  Jover had a power point too that made the presentation more visually appealing and helped people understand what she was talking about.

I do not think that I will use any aspects of this lecture in my final project.  I liked it a lot and how she talked about architectural and I see how it is related to art but I don’t think I will use anything that she said or did.

Event 2:

Second event I went to was Explore Oregon which was located in the Museum of Natural and Cultural History.  It was based off 300 million years of Northwest natural history in Oregon.  The museum basically let me explore the forces shaping Oregon’s landscapes and ecosystems. In there I took part in talks about climate, conservation, and our future. I also saw giant saber-tooth salmon and other amazing animals from Oregon’s past.

I though the museum had a lot to offer and I thought it was really interesting.  It talked about the history of Oregon’s landscape and the animals that used to be here millions of years ago.  They talked about how the landscape came to be.  It interested me a lot actually because I think history is really cool and how time changes everything such as the land and the animals that inhabit this area.

This event I thought connects with art in a lot of ways and some things we talked about in class.  One thing that I thought it connected to was when we were learning about  when we talked about how maps tell a story.  An example we used in class was when Naplleon invaded Russia and the map told a story about how over time his army kept getting smaller.  When the people at the museum talked about how Oregon changed over time it reminded me of that.

I do not think that I will use any aspects of this lecture in my final project. I maybe could talk about how the landscape changed and how patterns in it refer to patterns and fractals but besides that I can’t use it for my final project.

After going to the theater and watching the play, it made me realize that I am thinking like an artist in ways that I didn’t think artist did.  When doing my project I’m researching my topics and trying to relate it to nature and science to find out how things relate which is what the play was a little bit about.  It made me realize that people actually put a lot of thought and time into their work and really try to have it mean something.  The main point of the play was mainly about how women didn’t have opportunities and when a few tried to strive and for greatest and when they did, it was an amazing accomplishment for the world and for women.  Also what the play was about was a girl went to Harvard but they didn’t give her the job of working in the astronomy department.  She starts mapping out stars and eventually she discoverers a huge break through for science.

Scott Draves work.

Scott Draves created his artwork by writing software that works with a supercomputer
consisting of 450,000 computers and people. The first versions of this is from 1992 and each image is a form of artificial life with thousands of numbers of fractals that define how it looks and moves
He created this collective intelligence “the Electric Sheep” in 1999 and it has been evolving
and developing since. The system is based on an open source screensaver that any person can use and create their own displays. All the computers work together to render the animations, or “sheep”. ‘Sheep’ are fractal animations that can be designed by humans, generated by computers using a genetic algorithm, or a combination of both to make creative designs visuals. All the people contribute their creativity and aesthetics,  open source, crowd source, and by voting.

He pick sheep for how they look, because of their relationship to each other or a theme, or to tell a story. The final creations are like paintings by applying supercomputer power and the techniques
of artificial intelligence to image synthesis he create works beyond geometry, beyond the
mechanical, beyond the limitations of a single human creator, all with a fine level of detail
rarely seen in digital art. Artificial intelligence is intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that are capable of intelligent behavior.

A fractal is a never-ending patterns that are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Fractals are images of dynamic systems and always have reoccurring patterns. Fractals occur naturally all the time in nature.  Another definition of fractals to help better understand them is that they are branches of geometry that explains irregular shapes and processes.

Here is just a screenshot image.

Fractals in technology just like Scott Draves work

Fractals in nature

Fractals in humans

More fractals in nature

So More About Fractals?

What do mountains, food, and the stock market have in common? The answer to that is fractals.

What is a fractal? Again

A fractal is a geometric pattern that repeats at every level of magnification. Fractals are common in nature and are found nearly everywhere. One example could be broccoli. Every branch of broccoli looks just like its parent stalk. More examples are the surface of the lining of your lungs has a fractal pattern that allows for more oxygen to be absorbed. Such complex real-world processes can be expressed in equations through fractal geometry. Even to the everyday person, fractals are generally neat to look at even if you don’t understand what a fractal is. However to a mathematician it means a lot.

Why are fractals important?
Fractals help us study and understand important scientific concepts, such as the way bacteria grow, patterns in freezing water such as snowflakes, and brain waves, for example. Their formulas have made possible many scientific breakthroughs. Wireless cell phone antennas use a fractal pattern to pick up the signals better, and pick up a wider range of signals, rather than a simple antenna. Anything with a rhythm or pattern is considered being a fractal. “Casey Donoven, one of Montana State University’s newest recipients of the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for excellence in science and math, uses fractals in his research to understand variations in heartbeats.”(Phys.org)

Want to make your own normal fractals?

http://sciencevsmagic.net/fractal/#0060,0090,1,1,0,0,1

I had a good time with our guest speaker last class.  She made it very interactive which I liked.  We learned about natural components in our clothing and then we drew symbols to represent how we would incorporate it into clothing we would sell.  I thought the active was very interesting and original.  Before that earlier we talk about how we can show maps in different ways to show different stories which I thought was very cool.

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Links to pictures that I took during class

Data visualization is a very interesting aspect that people including myself.  Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. It enables decision makers to see analytics presented visually.  It helps people understand the concepts better and help them understand your overall story you are trying to tell.  I could try to use the concept of fractals and how to use them in nature because fractals are what is in my artist work and they appear all the time in nature.

A type of failure I had was during one of our classes when we were presenting our creative displays in class.  I thought I had a good idea going but people in class told me their opinions and made me realize that I had to rethink about my idea I little more.  Julie and Robert also brought up the point that my idea was just jumping to conclusions and I need to show my thought process better and explain how and where I am getting my ideas from my creative display from.

How I learned from it was just listening to other people give me advice for my final project.  I really liked Jacobs’s idea for me.  He gave me another way on how I can take my artist’s work for my final project.

In the article, Viewpoint: “How creativity is helped by failure”, I think it brings up a lot of really good points and wanted people to see not the final project that an artist created, but their artworks failures to show how they didn’t get it perfect on the first try.  It shows how the artist aren’t perfect and it shows a little bit of the process that they had to go through to try to achieve perfection.  I also liked how they talked about how in all Disney animated movies, they all suck and what the people at Disney do, is try to make them not suck in the final product.  I think this could relate to my failure achievement because my first ideas for my creative display were alright but not that well thought out yet just like a lot of people’s work in the article.  But as you get ideas and suggestions from other people, you start to glue all the ideas together and make your final project something that is great.

Failure 2

I think another failure that I had was during the second creative display.  It was better than the first however I didn’t take it to the next step.  I needed to connect it better socially and to research more.  People told me to go out and find what other thing I can connect to and research more.

How I learned from it was just listening to other people give me advice for my final project.  I think criticism is very useful and even if people tell you that you need to improve, all it does is help you get better in the long run.

In the article, Viewpoint: “How creativity is helped by failure”,  it brings up many points and wants people to see not the final project that an artist created, but their artworks failures to show how they didn’t get it perfect on the first try. It shows how the artist aren’t perfect and it shows a little bit of the process that they had to go through to try to achieve perfection just like I said in the first failure.  Something that i did to improve from my failure was to take their advice and research more about Scott Draves’s purpose. I found out that he tried to create a virtual reality and propose the question of, do computer have artifical intelligence?  An a social problem that could happen is, if computer develop artificial intelligent, will that be good or bad?  That’s what I got out of my failure achievement.