Initially when I heard about new media arts I thought it was only things like digital art and graphic design. I didn’t know how wrong I was until I saw some of the great things some artist made like Jer Thorp and Robert Hodgin just to name a few. New media arts isn’t just traditional art it’s more like interactive art. artists really have no limits with what they can and can’t do. The creative freedom is what really makes it very interesting and something I wish to pursue.

The first piece of new media arts I would like to talk about is the Herald Harbinger by Robert Hodgin. This piece of art is located at the Brookfield Place in Calgary. What really makes the piece intresting to me how it collects data from the Bow Glacier in the Canadian Rockies and visually contrasts it with the real time activity of pedestrians and cars in the city around it. The artist explains it as “a long distance conversation as between a city and a glacier and a city”. One of the principles of slow design this piece of art really shows is the expand principle. It does this by making the physical transformations of the Bow Glacier contrast with the activity of the city to make a active piece of art that is always changing. 

Another piece I found real interesting is Taxi, Taxi! by Robert Hodgin. The premise of this piece of art is to show the activity and routes that taxis in Manhattan take. It’s honestly just something really captures my interest because of just how much is going on in the city. There’s always something going on and the way they use the lights as the routes make it look really eye catching. Taxi, Taxi! clearly follows the principle of reveal because of the attention it brings to how many taxis are around the city and the routes they take. 

Down the line I’d really want to make something like these two pieces. One of the projects I’ve been thinking about is a  tree on a monitor that responds to the weather around it. For example it takes the temperature of the surrounding area and that can affect the color of its leaves. When its hot out the leaves are a nice green color but when it gets colder the leaves turn more orange and then last of all when its freezing the leaves fall off and snow covers it. This wouldn’t be the only thing about it though, the wind would also have an effect on the leaves making the tree sway and leaves blow off. This idea would use the expand principle because of it using the environment to help create art like the changing colors of the leaves.

Another project I’ve been thinking about is interactive piece where there’s a floor tile that interacts when more people go onto it. When someone steps onto the tile it splits the tile into two separate colored areas and the more people go onto it the more it splits up and the more colors there are. The colors would also alternate to the other colors present on the floor. There would be more too it but this is just my rough idea of the project. This would be following the engage principle because whenever someone steps onto the tile they change the color and change the look of the tile.

While looking for some of the pieces of art I wanted to talk about I found plenty of others that caught my eye. All the pieces are so different from each other which only shows how creative these artist can really be with what they do. I’m really looking forward to when I’ll be able to make the projects I have in mind to reality. By the time I have the skill to create them I’m sure I’ll come up with even better ideas than the ones I had at the time when I made this post.