Rachel Rossin Mixes art and technology and experiments with mixing the physical and virtual worlds

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Teresa Gibson
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1 The project I have decided to try and show the lines blurring between digital versions of ourselves and the real world. Everyone s digital information held by company s like Facebook and Google make a digital version of us all using it, although this isn t visualised in the form of an avatar on these particular platforms. Some other social media platforms, all be them less popular, do let you create a virtual representation of your physical form. There is nothing to stop a person making something very different to represent themselves in theses worlds. This could be classed as giving them freedom to be who or what they want, will also allow people to pretend to be someone else. Depending on your view this could be a good or bad thing. I plan to show this ever-closer amalgamation of physical and virtual worlds by creating a series of photographs of me doing everyday tasks but a virtual version of me will be doing it. The virtual me isn t going to be perfectly like me, it will be a rough approximation of me. I want it to look like a virtual person, not a Hollywood style effect seamlessly blending a computer generated character into the real world. I want it to look added in. I plan to take the photographs for producing the composite images from in a vernacular style, so they look like quick snaps on a camera phone. This fits with the everyday tasks I plan to reproduce in the images, the sort of thing that someone may take and post on social media. Other people s work in influences Some films released in the last year have been based around this theme, Ready Player One, Ghost In The Shell and Bladerunner. All are set in the future and blend the virtual and real worlds, the closest of these three films to my work here is Ghost In The Shell. Human minds are transplanted into a new fully mechanical body, a physical manifestation of a virtual avatar. Could people in the future pick their new body with a design wizard as you do in the virtual worlds of 2 nd Life and Sansar. I have looked at the works of a few artists working in VR and the virtual worlds, one I have chosen to look at more is Giovanni Nakpil. Nakpil grew up in Maila and loved watching sci-fi and horror films, he studied computer graphics in Totonto and then went on to work at Industrial Light and Magic. This lead him to work on many Hollywood films including Star Trek and The Avengers. He now is lead character designer at Oculus. His work is a mixture of real people and fictional characters. One that grabbed my attention is called Photo Bombed. It shows 2 people in swimwear with a swamp monster style creature walking up behind them while they take a selfie with a mobile phone on a stick. For me this shows what the selfie is the works thing to happen to photography, people spend more time taking the selfie than looking around them. Just being there and not taking in their environment.

Figure 1 Photo Bombed Nakpil, G (2016) Other artists I have looked at in less detail are Elizabeth Edwards A 3D artist that started working in VR while at university Rachel Rossin Mixes art and

2 Figure 1 Photo Bombed Nakpil, G (2016) Other artists I have looked at in less detail are Elizabeth Edwards A 3D artist that started working in VR while at university Rachel Rossin Mixes art and technology and experiments with mixing the physical and virtual worlds Cao Fei Exhibits art in 2nd life What and how I plan to do it The choice of application to make the 3D person has been a little tricky. As I have an Adobe CC subscription, my 1 st thought was to look at what they had to offer. Photoshop does have some 3D character capabilities, but doesn t allow you to pose them how you want. There are a pre-defined list of basic poses and animations that s can t be customised. Cinema 4D is also included with Adobe CC, but it s not a product I have used before, so may not be the best option for this project given the time it may take to learn the skills needed. I have also have a copy of all Autodesk software including Maya, I have used this in the past and can remember my way round it, but again as with Cinema 4D it s very complex software. Drawing a drinks can is about my limit, although I can do some basic character rigging. I decided to purchase another application I have used in the past called Poser, it s designed just to create 3D and cartoon style people and animate them. It gives you full control very easily over the movement of the model. Augmented reality would also be a very fitting technology for this project, using something like Unreal Engine would be the perfect application for this. But again I don t have the experience at the moment to use it for this project.

The following is a list of possible images I could make, some are definitely more challenging than others and maybe time prohibitive, above what I can

Although I do plan on having a go at most of them even though I know they will be very difficult for me to do to any decent standard, it will still be

3 The following is a list of possible images I could make, some are definitely more challenging than others and maybe time prohibitive, above what I can currently do or require special equipment to produce. Although I do plan on having a go at most of them even though I know they will be very difficult for me to do to any decent standard, it will still be a learning experience going through the process of trying to make the image. - BBQing lunch - Making a drink (cup of tea or squash) - Walking the dog - Using laptop in the living room - Cleaning the house This is the virtual me I have created in Poser.

The process if making the images I will show using the 1

and turn off the floor so it can be seen, then move the

4 The process if making the images I will show using the 1 st one the BBQ scene. Clean the photo up in Lightroom and export as a JPEG file. Import photo from Lightroom in to Poser as a background and turn off the floor so it can be seen, then move the avatar around till it fits the photo. Render the avatar as a PNG file with a transparent background.

5 Open the photo in Photoshop and add the avatar as top layer, then blend them together. Displaying the work I have may ideas around how I should display the finished images, most of them just aren t possible for me at the moment, due to lack of available equipment and not having 3D modelling skills to do what I want. If I go on to develop this as a personal project in the future I would like to display the images in a full 3D environment, enabling the viewer to pick their view point. Other options I have been considering are prints around the size of a computer screen, giving a physical copy of a virtual image. An online slide show, this would keep it nonphysical. A blog or social media post, this would connect well with the images as the virtual figure is a representation of a virtual me from an online environment. I have decided to make a social media post for the final images, this will be a web page with a separate post for each image for a made up website. The link to this will be at the end of this assignment after the final images. I will also include screen shots of the posts in this assignment in case of problems with the web site hosting in the future. The final images BBQing

6 Making a drink Dog Walk

7 Using my laptop in the living room Vacuum in the kitchen

Presentation of the work The web site I have created to display the images can be found at the following address. http://files.davidw.

8 Presentation of the work The web site I have created to display the images can be found at the following address. I have very loosely designed the site around Facebook, but have decided to keep it to a very minimum. Black text on a white background, and no graphics other than the images. A lot like a gallery wall, it s not about the design of the site it s about the images, the site is a transport for the images to be viewed.

11 References Figure 1 - Nakpil, G. (2016). Photo Bomb. Available: Last accessed 16th June Bibliography 3dEx. (2017). Autodesk Maya Soda Can Tutorial. Available: Last accessed 12th June Editor. (2018). Rachel Rossin. Available: Last accessed 11th June Editor. (2018). Rachel Rossin. Available: Last accessed 11th June Editor. (2018). Unreal Engine for AR, VR & MR. Available: Last accessed 8th June Edwards, E. (2018). Elizabeth Edwards. Available: Last accessed 10th June Fei, C. (2018). Cao Fei. Available: Last accessed 11th June Editor. (2018). Cao Fei. Available: Last accessed 14th June Nakpil, G. (2016). About. Available: Last accessed 16th June Nakpil, G. (2016). Photo Bombed. Available: Last accessed 16th June Reid, S. (2017). Liz Edwards Creating Art In Tilt Brush. Available: Last accessed 10th June Renderosity. (2014). POSER Tutorial Lesson 1: Getting around the POSER interface. Available: Last accessed 12th June Rossin, R. (2018). Rachel Rossin. Available: Last accessed 11th June 2018.

Learning Outcomes In this lesson, you will learn about the file formats in Adobe Photoshop. By familiarizing

Topic 4 - Photoshop File Formats Learning Outcomes In this lesson, you will learn about the file formats in Adobe Photoshop. By familiarizing yourself with these file formats it will give you more flexibility