1000 word write up....

Originally we were set the task of setting a problem and providing an answer to it using digital art. My original idea was one with music and radio. However, I changed this idea in favour of something more within the scope of my abilities.

I was inspired by Dadaism, and the ‘cut-up technique’. The cut up technique is something used to inspire creative thoughts. A series of meaningful or meaningless sentences would be written down on paper; then cutup and rearranged to make a poem or lyrics. This was used by the likes of David Bowie and Kurt Cobain.

Writer's Block, as it has sometimes been called is a common problem, as is lack of inspiration towards art. This is still a problem today, and people still use the cutup technique. However, no longer does this need physical paper and scissors. The application and I have created is a combination of traditional poetry and modern day song lyrics; when please press at random (or indeed, sequentially). It will rearrange the lyrics and words on the screen.

So using Flash action script. I have mapped out the letters of the keyboard to correspond with snippets of poetry. It is because of this that no user will ever get the same result, unless they type exactly the same sentence or word.

I have tried to make this process more visually pleasing also. It has been said that a picture paints a thousand words, and for good reason. When the eye sees a picture or an image that there are enough connotations associated with it to spark off sentence after sentence. Hopefully, when people are using my programme, they may have ideas generated of their own

I have also researched art movements, contemporary arts, “ the art object”, authorship and post-modernism.

With the increasing use of computers and current technology is paper and pen is almost a thing of the past. When we copy and paste something in a Word document, this is only a metaphor from the standing the process involved -- they want complex task can be made very simple. What I have tried to do is to think about the resources available to me, my technical abilities, current media in contrast to old media. I have also included is visualisations in this application that correspond with the words of the poem. I have also included a sound, some meaningful and relevant and some at random… I have done this because a man unstructured, unconventional approach/way of thinking is good for people's creativity. Hopefully this project will inspire other people in terms of the use of Flash and what I've done with the technology, and possibly a different approach to writing.
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After deciding on my idea the first thing to look at was ASCII characters and mapping the letters of the keyboard. Every letter of the keyboard, already has binary code, associated with it and ASCII code, this is an example of encoding and decoding. I have tried to replicate this process even further, and utilise and every day peripheral by turning it into something different.

I managed to get to the p letters of the keyboard to correspond with going to a different frame in a movie clip. It would highlight a letter that was in that movie clip. After successfully doing that, I went on to work on the display the message. To do this, I needed an editable array that would hold be lyrics or poem. And a dynamic text display box to display this information. Using an empty array I used the push feature of action script to attach items onto the end of the array. I encountered some problems with this, as it would delete be information that was stored in the array and replace it by and new keys push element.

When this was working, I added scrollable arrows, as the information that was being put into the array was far too long to fit on one small screen.

I experimented with duplicating movies and attaching movies onto the stage, and creating different effects using code. This application uses several different features to achieve the end result, which is a combine a collage of graphics on-screen and a text. This is a generative art piece and individual to each user.

I was interested in, with the idea that art may be seen by different people in a different way (after subjective). Traditionally, arts was interactive in a way that he may look at a painting and interpret different form elements within it, and appreciate it for the skill and creativity that has gone into it.

With new media art is interactive; this brings up the issue of authorship. That is to say is the user technically responsible for creating a piece of art or part of that art piece? Perhaps whatever medium the arts was made with, the inventor of that played a role in the authorship. At the time of the Dadaism Marcel Duchamp, produced several ‘ready- mades’. The post-modernist view is that it is. It is fine to use other peoples creations within your own work to create something new.

Very much an issue with today's digital art, as a lot is made with computer coding (there has been made by someone else originally)… I have tried to draw implants from this issue and address it within my work, I have used the work of ‘William Wordsworth’ - an 18th-century poet. I used his poem “ written while sailing in a boat at evening” and the modern day song lyrics “ the sea” by ‘Morcheeba’. I have also a few words from myself in the poem, so it all generates a source remix of old and new.

In conclusion, the programme that I have made is entirely unique to the user. And in to the use of resources, as well as a creative look at conceptual art. Many people have the problem of not being able to think of a creative idea, or be able to write a meaningful poem.

I have achieved what I set out to do originally, as different sounds played, therefore altering audio track. Different graphics are displayed, therefore altering be the look of the application. And I suppose, most importantly, the poem itself is different every time, depending on what is typed.

One possible progression of this idea is that the user would be able to change the letters of the Keys to their own sentences, or words. I experimented little with this idea, however, I found it to interfere with my current application, and finally deciding to abandon it. A further progression of that idea would be to have the server side coding. Therefore it would retain that be poem of one person and be able to expand on this idea.