Author: Ryan Rotella
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Response to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin’s classic 1935 essay still has more meaningful things to say about art, politics, and modes of production than most of our discourse today. I felt this incongruity between past and current thought most in his passages on the use of distraction in filmmaking. Benjamin writes, “A man who concentrates before a work of…
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Thesis update 1
For this first round of building my thesis, I focused on how game-like my UI should be for my 3D social media site. Modern 2D web interfaces have strict rules around spacing and alignment, but having a 3D site means having to fuse those rules with how people usually navigate 3D worlds: video games. From…
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Week 3: World-Building
Tutorial: Spirograph by Okamirufu Vizualizer I followed this tutorial by Okamirufu Vizualizer because I really love this surreal geometry that can also contain recognizable spiritual symbols. I want my world to defamiliarize people from their immediate surroundings and call into question all the invisible forces at play that are affecting our tangible world. My Documentation…
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Are All Images now Poor Images?
Response to Poor Image This incredible article written by Hito Steyerl in 2009 analyzed the material conditions of the poor digitized image to a tee. The analysis is so on point that I feel this piece read the trend of corporate media to invest in profiting off of the digital ecosystem. “Digital communication has also…
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APM Week 2: Generative Design
In Class Documentation Phone footage from Class OBS Documentation of Network TouchDesigner ZIP File Approaching Generative Design The effect from this book I would choose to model in TouchDesigner is: Typography, P_3_1_3_01 If I were to do it, I might twist it to show different messages as people put their hands in different places/gestures with…
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Reaction to Photosculptures
The Reading My Reaction Reading about Francois Willeme’s photosculptures in mid-1800s France sparked a few reactions from me. First, I’m stunned that he and other French sculptors of the time were automating camera networks (activating quarter plate cameras with one trigger) and seeking to automate the sculpture making process. Historically, since the Industrial Revolution had…
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My Ode To Cubism with MediaPipe
I think I may have misunderstood the assignment, as I did my own custom projection piece. No matter, here’s how it turned out. My Projection Disclaimer: I had to use two separate takes and put them together due to space being small, so it’s not the most accurate representation. But it is all real time!…
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Out On The Field
by Ryan Rotella The hopes of my Saturday rest on the shoulders of 18 to 25 year old men who I’ll never know But who used to be my father, uncles, and grandfather On the field The men clad in armored pads and helmetsAllow me to project onto themManifesting more passion than most anywhere else in lifeMy side…
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Thesis Progress Update 4
This week marked a significant pivot in my thesis direction. After exploring theatrical immersive performances over the past few weeks, I’ve decided to shift toward creating a satirical gambling app that reveals the gambling logic embedded throughout modern society. This experience will combine a mobile app built in Swift/SwiftUI with projection mapping via TouchDesigner, using…
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YouTube: Entertainment Innovation
YouTube has fundamentally transformed how I consume media every day of my life. What started as a simple video-sharing platform of lip syncing and parodies has evolved into a digital behemoth that adapts to whatever I need at a given moment. For me, Youtube now functions as an oscillator of content between background noise and…
Ryan Rotella 