Get “Stuck”
Although I didn't know anything, I seemed to know something, and there was a feeling that told me, "you got it."
In fact, I didn't realize anything. I was just sitting here, starting at a confused beginning and ending at a more confused end.
produced by: Xiaoyi Hu
Introduction
In the past two years, my life is often "be stuck", stuck in "my own principles", in "the struggle of whether or not to compromise", "it seems difficult for me to make any decision to move forward", and "is it possible that the whole world is right? in the confused that only my persistence is wrong. People often seek meaning in doing things, because people are used to focusing on meaningful things and are equally good at building a meaningful world. For the pictures, meaning corresponds to people 's life, dreams, childhood, desires, etc. However, the image produced by the program language itself has become a neglected island away from the meaning-building continent. In an interview in 1987, photographer Friedlander said: “Other people may move a little for staying away from those obstacles, namely poles or trees, but for me, I will move for recording them in my photos. This is what I usually do, which is sometimes an unconscious act.”[1] Meaningless things created by machines have more possibilities and can deepen such perception and insights. “Those things shown in pictures are not common experiences of a small group.” but are the experiences with more possibilities. Those things can be anything and anywhere. Then I use lines, squares, pictures, and image pixels, from "stuck" in tiny pixels to "stuck" in a model made of squares. I no longer insist on pursuing a result, they become part of myself throughout the process.
Concept and background research
We originally planned a three-layer drop structure model, but then with the addition of groupmates, we designed a convex model which is opposite to the concave surface. The contrast of the two models also highlights the "stuck". Except that I've been thinking about "stuck" and want to present the idea, the scene of applause after the Stickman run in the projection comes from "kids" developed by Playables, Mario von Rickenbach. I added "stuck" special effects to a game scene I played and pixel it. The theme of "kids" is particularly subtle: conformity sometimes makes you feel in the sociable, sometimes it puts you in danger, and sometimes it's your only choice.
I chose a scene, facing a sea of children, dragging the mouse pointer to get them ready to applaud, and finally burst into orderly applause. When the children fall into the pit, it is the beginning. Being digested, treated and excreted is the end. The shape has not changed, but the heart tends to follow other people's thoughts, afraid of strange eyes, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of loneliness. When the other nine people are saying "That way", it takes too much courage to stick to their own ideas and go against the crowd. Because of this, the picture of drilling out from the bottom of the water in harmony with three or five people is quite moving. But in the end, they were submerged again, and I realized that I couldn't save anyone. All I could do was get them to fall faster.
The loss of edges and corners becomes smooth, and then from smooth to mediocre.
Perhaps it is still in the "stuck" state, in order to find some balance. Or probably you may not find anything.
Technical
I used for loops, sin/cos, if-statements, vectors, functions, and I wanted to start with pixel blocks, so I wrote some flowing lines and then slowly transitioned to a coherent picture. The biggest challenge is to complete some mathematical calculations, but there are still a lot of effects achieved from lab assignments and some processing's tutorial.
Future development
There are many possibilities, I can continue to do the stickman series, but it is best to replace them all with their own stickman animation, just like the first stickman running screen, which is made of a frame by frame of the stickman (this part I only be written in processing, it is not put into the openframeworks code). It can make the picture more concise and more expressive.
Self evaluation
The effect of the black-and-white picture is better, while the color picture is less obvious because of the projection lumen and clarity. In short, I have completed the content and process I want to express, but the biggest problem is that the relevance of each of my scene is too weak, resulting in a lot of scenarios that are not coherent, which is what I am not satisfied with. I didn't think too much about consistency at the beginning. I think there is still a lot of room for improvement. I hope I can string it into a story in the future.
References
[1]Phillip,G.,2009.Photography After Frank.New York: Aperture. ISBN 978-1597110952, said Friedlander could find out the texture of nature from the world that we lived in but we turned a blind eye to before he mixed all the factors together and presented them. The wisdom including perception, logic and insight have been shown in his observation of daily life through vision language.
[2]Workshops in Creative Coding Lab and Homework Assignments
[3]Shiffman's Coding Challenges series tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRqwX-V7Uu6ZiZxtDDRCi6uhfTH4FilpH
[4]Kids: Video game, Initial release date: 28 May 2019, Developers: Michael Frei, Mario von Rickenbach, Playables GmbH, Playables
Designers: Michael Frei, Mario von Rickenbach, Publishers: Double Fine, Playables
[5]Soundtrack: Pickin On Whitewolf by septahelix © copyright 2015 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license.