Moma Talk to Me Artists

Ink Calendar
Oscar Diaz

His work is not defined by a style, but rather by a way of understanding, exploring and questioning objects, while considering their context  and the cultural associations embedded on them.
It is this attention to the context where an object will live, that allows him to work at both ends of the design spectrum. His commissions include limited edition pieces, made together with craftsmen and sold by galleries, to mass produced objects, developed in close collaboration with manufacturers in Europe and Asia. 
Plain and playful, his objects take inspiration from the everyday things,  which by a simple twist, become something unexpected. 
While challenging assumptions, each project propose simple solutions that often involve a narrative aspect. 
“Ink Calendar” make use the timed pace of the ink spreading on the paper to indicate time.
The ink is absorbed slowly, and the numbers in the calendar are “printed” daily. One a day, they are filled with ink until the end of the month. A calendar self-updated, which enhances the perception of time passing and not only signaling it.
The ink colors are based on a spectrum, which relate to a “color temperature scale”, each month having a color related to our perception of the weather on that month. The colors range from dark blue in December to, three shades of green in spring or oranges, red in the summer.
A "self-updating" calendar, the capillary action of ink gradually absorbed through paper reveals dates, at the rate at one each day, over the time-span of each month. The steady advance of ink through the paper emphasizes the perception of time passing, and each month's ink color relates to the mood generally associated with that time of year.

I think I've seen this piece before in one of my classes and maybe that was why I was drawn to it. The idea and technology is really interesting. I like the idea of mixing a "traditional" medium such as ink and paper with a "new" media like technology.

Artificial Biological Clock
Revital Cohen

http://www.revitalcohen.com/project/artificial-biological-clock/

addresses the contentious subject of modern reproductive technology with this piece. In vitro fertilization and related methods, she explains, are making it hard to retain a realistic view of how long a woman may put off childbearing. She contrasts the natural and artificial by highlighting contemporary social pressures and expectations that dictate a woman's reproductive vitality, rather than her natural body rhythms. A woman no longer in touch with her body's rhythms could rely on the Artificial Biological Clock to remind her of her fertility's "temporary and fragile nature". The clock is fed information via an online service from her doctor, therapist, and bank manager. When these factors align perfectly, the clock lets her know that she is ready to have a child.


http://www.revitalcohen.com/project/the-immortal/

The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering. 
The interpretation of anatomy with a mechanical vocabulary reflects strongly on the Western perception of the body. 
These objects encompass social debates about the ethics of euthanasia, the quantification of both the value and quality of life, making physical a poetic desire to conquer our own mortality. 
The medical machine - whether in use or not - is an object which transcends its materiality. Designed and created to perform a single, most meaningful function, we never subject these devices to a critical investigation as industrial products within the context of material culture. 

This work aims to explore the nature of these devices as objects of our times, liberated from their restrained purpose while still charged with its resonance.  

Of the three artists I looked at this one was my second favorite, with Matsuda's piece being my favorite. A lot of my work has to deal with feminist ideas and stereotypes about women and such. So when I saw the title "artificial biological clock" I was immediately drawn to it. I really like the idea that the clock takes in factors that really impacted a woman's decision on whether or not she can have a child. 



Augmented (Hyper) Reality: Augmented City 3D
Keiichi Matsuda

Designer and film-maker. He began working with video during his Masters of Architecture at the Bartlett school (UCL) as a critical tool to understand, construct and represent space. Keiichi's research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment, focusing on the integration of media into everyday life. He has a multi-disciplinary approach to his work, using a mixture of video, motion graphics, interaction design, and architecture to create vibrant "hyper-real" environments where the distinctions between physical and virtual start to dissolve. 

http://www.keiichimatsuda.com/augmentedcity.php

He considers the architecture of today's city to be increasingly about "the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume, and organize," rather than the built form. In his film, Matsuda gives life to this idea, presenting the city as an "immersive human-computer interface" where the experience of moving and interacting with the 3D environment is enhanced by an integrated layer of augmented reality.
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology defined by its ability to overlay physical space with information. It is part of a paradigm shift that succeeds Virtual Reality; instead of disembodied occupation of virtual worlds, the physical and virtual are seen together as a contiguous, layered and dynamic whole. It may lead to a world where media is indistinguishable from 'reality'. The spatial organisation of data has important implications for architecture, as we re-evaluate the city as an immersive human-computer interface.

http://www.keiichimatsuda.com/augmented.php

The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

I really like the concept behind Matsuda's work. He deals with the idea of technologically consumption and consumption in generally. I really enjoyed how he presented the concept visual with a video that is overlayed with these "images" that look similar to a 3D movie. His series "Augmented Reality" really caught my attention, first by the aesthetic of the piece but once I started looking deeper into it, the concept behind the piece was the thing kept my attention. It's almost like an exploration of how technological can progress with the trend that it is going now.