Final Paper

Artists: Nick Yulman and Matt Richardson

            When looking through the extensive list of artists that we were able to choose from for this final paper and presentation I knew what I was looking for. Two artists who were different, unique and did more than take a paintbrush to a canvas or messed around in Photoshop or final cut. Nick Yulman and Matt Richardson both did projects different from anything I have ever seen done before and they both took a unique spin on everyday objects.
            The piece by Nick Yulman caught my attention because it is a unique music mixer. We had just completed our Youtube mixer project and when I found this it was like this was a mixer outside of the digital world. Yulman took what we had done on the computer, but did it in real life using a drawer full of every day objects. This piece is called Song Cabinet and it is an interactive art music piece.  Users can activate the by exploring the contents of a set of drawers (Yulman).  Each of the drawers contain small mechanical instruments that are digitally controlled and they play varying patterns depending on how far the drawer is pulled out. One interacts with the Song Cabinet by opening and closing drawers they can mute and unmute various parts of the drawer and even select various musical patterns. A user is able to become somewhat of a DJ and mix their own song by using these different methods and interacting with Song Cabinet in different ways. The objects contained in each drawer, are from Yulman’s personal collection and are associated with particular places, indicated by the labels on the drawers. In exploring the collection, users coax these static objects into a rhythmic dialog with each other and create an intermingling of their associated memories (Yulman).

Yulman created Song Cabinet with the intent of allowing individuals to be able to make music without needing to have and instrumental ability. As long as a user knows what sounds good and what they like to hear they are able to make music from found objects by just opening the drawers of the cabinet. The more a user plays with the drawers not only do they get to make different sounds and create music, but also get to see all the interesting ways that Song Cabinet works and how it is that it works.

            The second artist I have chosen to focus on is Matt Richardson and his piece Descriptive Camera. This piece of work really caught my attention because I have always thought about pictures and how they are said to speak a thousand words, but Richardson is able to actually give pictures and scenes words. Instead of looking at a scene and snapping a picture of it, words are developed and instead of looking at the objects that are contained within a scene one is able to think about the objects that are there. The Descriptive Camera works like a regular camera in the sense that a user points it at a subject or a scene presses the shutter button and it is captured. However, instead of producing an image, this uses what is called crowd sourcing to output a text description of the scene instead of an image of the objects. Modern digital cameras capture gobs of "parsable" metadata about photos such as the camera's settings, the location of the photo, the date, and time, but they don't output any information about the content of the photo. The Descriptive Camera only outputs the metadata about the content (Richardson). This is not jut a simple interactive piece there is a lot of technology that has gone into making it able to do what it is capable of doing. The technology behind the core of the Descriptive Camera is Amazon's Mechanical Turk API, which allows a developer to submit Human Intelligence Tasks also known as HITS for workers on the Internet to complete. The developer is able to set the guidelines for each task and can sets a price they are willing to pay for successful completion of each task. For faster and cheaper results, the camera can also be put into "accomplice mode," where it will send an instant message to any other person. That IM will contain a link to the picture and a form where they can input the description of the image (Richardson).  

The Descriptive Camera is connected to the Internet using an Ethernet cord and gets power from an external 5-volt source. How it comes together to work is once the shutter button is pressed the device uploads the picture to the web, which is then described within minutes by users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service. Then the short description is sent back to the camera and printed by the thermal printer resulting in text that is printed in in the style of a Polaroid print. There is a lot of technology behind the Descriptive Camera and it is more than just taking a photograph and getting words from it, but a whole digital process.

“My work comes first from exploring technology that interests me. I like to see how it works, how well it works, how people use it, and how it falls short. This process is about figuring out what it affords me in terms of expression. Is it something worth better understanding so that I can have it in my toolbox? Through that process of understanding the technology, the work tends to organically come from my research into it. As I work with the technology, I ask a bunch of "What if I..." questions and see where it goes,” said Richardson.  

Both artists Yulman and Richardson are the same in the sense that they took simple everyday objects and made something extraordinary and unique out them. They were able to make these objects into forms of digital interactive art. Yulman took drawers and his own personal objects to make a mixer, which users can make sounds and music with depending on how far they open the drawers. He made it possible for the user to become a composer with something so simple. There is no need for one to have the ability to play an instrument because the drawers and the objects they contain are the instruments and all the user has to do is pull out drawers and play around with them to find out which ones to pull out and how far until they come up with something amazing.        Then there is Richardson who took the everyday object of a camera and made it do what no one could have thought possible. His Descriptive Camera gives pictures words, and even though there is human input involved and the camera doesn’t work entirely on its own the idea behind it is simply amazing and allows a user to see and think about what is in the picture they have taken. Both artist have really taken these ordinary objects and turned them into pieces of interactive art that are so unique and different. Their pieces allow users to step out of the ordinary world and set aside the thoughts of how these objects are supposed to work and create something truly amazing, unique and different.

Even though both these artists are very similar in the ways that they used ordinary objects to create their interactive pieces they are in fact different. Yulman is all in the drawers and all up to the user there is no outside source assisting what the drawers are outputting. Whereas Richardson’s piece relies on outside human input to give the picture taken words. It doesn’t work on it’s own like Yulman’s drawers do, if it were not for the input of the users of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service the thermal printers wouldn’t have the information needed to develop the text picture polaroid.

Besides differences and similarities in their works each artist is different and similar as well. They are both similar in the sense that they both know their craft and it is very clear what that craft is through their pieces. They differ in that their craft is different and their knowledge is different. Yulman is known not just for being an artist who creates digital works, but is a musician as well, which I believe is obvious though his piece of Song Cabinet. Without the knowledge of a musician I don’t believe that his piece would have come out like it did. It is clear that he took the time in thinking about how each object would sound and how the drawers would affect the sound. Richardson is a creative technologist who likes to make digital art and produce video. Through his piece Descriptive Camera I think it is clear what his interest is and he is indeed knowledgeable about technology and producing. There is a lot of technology behind how his piece works and how it is able produce words instead of a picture. He definitely put a creative spin on technology and how it can be used.

In conclusion, both artist created very similar pieces in the sense that they both took everyday objects and create unique interactive art out of them, but different because each has a different means of how the information is outputted, one piece works on it’s own and the other requires human input. Each artist is talented and knows their craft and their knowledge comes through in these two pieces, which I believe best represent their artistic ability. They may have knowledge in different areas and fields of digital media, but both of them were able to create pieces that were very similar in the way that the user will be able to experience something outside the norm by pulling drawers in and out to make music, or by taking a photo and having words be developed instead of an image. They both are able to take users to a different realm of the technology world and be apart of creating something different than they ever have before.

                                                          Works Cited

Richardson, Matt. "Descriptive Camera." Rhizome. N.p., May 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.

Richardson, Matt. "Digital Media Essay." Message to the author. 2 Dec. 2012. Web. 1     Dec. 2012.

Yulman, Nick. "Song Cabinet." Rhizome. N.p., Apr. 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.