My Electronics Experience

The only electronic art piece that comes to mind at this very moment is a piece done by a previous digital media student two years ago at what I'm guessing was their senior show. The piece projected a white screen onto the wall. When somebody walked in front of the projector, it created a silhouette of the person on the wall, and a descriptive word appeared over their heads. Sometimes i believe it was a hat instead. The words were accompanied by comic giggling coming from a speaker nearby. I honestly never really gave any thought to what the piece meant, but it was memorable because it made me laugh and I found myself interacting with it for longer than I had engaged with any of the other pieces at the show. I found it incredible that a piece so seemingly simple could be so engrossing. It was interesting to keep interacting with it over and over because the user got a different result every time. I believe I stayed long enough until it cycled through its databank of words/hats.

As far as my experience with electronics and sensors, I don't really have a whole lot. I remember when I was little, my parents bought me one of those Klutz kids kits that dealt with circuits and electronics. I think it included a battery, some wires, a motor with fan attachments, and a light. I remember that it was really entertaining for me and I enjoyed learning how it worked. As far as recent experience, using Processing was a nightmare for me last year. I really had a lot of trouble understanding how to build programs from scratch. I was able to look at a program and understand how it worked, but the other way around proved problematic for me. I'm hoping to gain a better understanding of Processing this year and maybe not want to throw my computer out the window.

Being a Digital Media major, I'm hoping to really develop the conceptual side of my work. I feel that last semester, I really didn't do a lot of conceptual thinking, and I think my work suffered slightly. I'm hoping to also be able to apply what I learn in this class to real-life scenarios. While I don't really plan on being an experimental electronics artist, but I would like to be able to fix electronics and be somewhat knowledgeable. I just hope that class is enjoyable and that I can become immersed in it.

-Netalia