Visualize-Art

Four Interactive Webzibits for Exploring Art & History

via MET, The Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian and NASA API

//

I’ve come to realize that most of my pages are some form of an Art Visualizer.

So let’s run down 4 of the recent mini-projects I’ve built that focus on art and user experience.

//

This grew from my discovery of (and goal to experiment with) API configuration after seeing folks online create projects with the MET collection. I added the Art institute of Chicago, Smithsonian and NASA to my list and here’s what I’ve done…

// 1 For my first idea, I took a script from scipxthon — an ASCII translator — and applied that to the art collections. So it pulls from each museum and allows users to generate ASCII copies of any artwork available. Cool, but cumbersome… so I got to thinking about my time in printmaking workshops and the various techniques for rendering imagery.

Mainly, I liked how this interactive could be ‘dynamic,’ meaning each artwork comes alive in the toggling of contrast, width and printmaking mode.

It’s now become an open list of printmaking techniques to Remix artworks from — we’ve got Dithering, ASCII and a CMYK ASCIII mode, Benday Dots, Comic Book mode, Risograph and ANSI Block mode.

In each mode, its more fun to ‘mess around’ with the settings than it is to seek a “PRODUCT” out of the experience. You can also click the red-yellow-green circles for more info about printmaking techniques.

Get Remixing here: hudsoncw.com/met

// 2 My second idea formed loosely while researching API for the Remix Gallery; I found NASA has both open access databases of Mars Rover photography and a “Astronomy Picture of the Day” series that comes with excellent tidbits. I wanted to do something very cyber, ethereal and with a lot of dithering…

That became DATA AS ART; visit the page and what you see on your left , the particles there are light mapped directly from the NASA photo of the day. To see the original photo, just click ‘source’

This interactive isn’t entirely what I want tbh but I haven’t had time to refine. Still, I check in periodically and while some images are better than others, at times the eruptions are marvelous, watching the light particles flurry like a firework show before ‘reveal’ing NASA’s original photo can be fun.

I’ll fine tune the overall ‘experience’ eventually but if you’re curious, its up at: hudsoncw.com/nasa

// 3 My third mini project began with me thinking: Wouldn’t it be cool to wrap a Jackson Pollock abstract around a sphere shape? That’s pretty much it; I Remember Pollock’s “Greyed Rainbow” painting from having visited it at the Art Institute of Chicago many times and thought it could be fun to visualize his abstract artworks in 3-dimensional forms like a ball, square, etc.

On this webpage, you can cycle through different artworks as they appear ‘wrapped’ around various 3-dimensional shapes; you can squeeze, spin, zoom… and better yet — but only for the sphere shape — you can toggle BOUNCE Mode… and watch as Jackson Pollocks, De Koonings, Kandinsky’s, Klint, Klines and more go bouncing and boing-ing around a cage.

Now, friend, if that description doesn’t make sense— just see for yourself! Don’t forget to have a bounce: hudsoncw.com/bollocks

// 4 My fourth and favorite art-specific project is one of the easiest I made and really gets to the heart of Kirby Ferguson’s “Copy Transform Combine” method for remixing. It’s all about the right chemistry of copying, combining and transforming existing materials to make something new and exciting.

The Sliding Picture Puzzle is a known game, but I specifically remember the ones from Zelda… anyway, I thought well wouldn’t it be fun to play that game again but with — you guessed it — artworks from the MET and AIC open access databases. The demo was spot on, but I added NASA for the final page because its funny how impossibly hard those pictures are in a game like this.

You can toggle between 3×3, 4×4 and 5×5… some are definitely harder than others.

Get sliding now: https://hudsoncw.com/puzzle/