CANVAS
2006. CANVAS (Collaborative Advanced Navigation Virtual Art Studio) is a 3-screened, back-projectioned portable virtual-reality open-lab for research and teaching projects by faculty in the fine and applied arts and the University. Informed by the concepts of collaboration, advanced navigation, and virtual art, CANVAS is a space for creating and presenting computer-assisted multi-dimensional projects. I am in charge of administering, obtaining projects, writing tools, assisting faculty use, and programming applications for this space. See http://www.canvas.uiuc.edu for more details and list of projects currently underway.
Tools For Artists - KAMScript
2006. I am currently developing software tools that will enable non-programming artists to easily create 3D artwork in a CAVE setting. KAMScript allows artists to place jpegs and mp3s in a 3D environment using a regular text file and a normal cartesian (X, Y, Z) coordinate system. This software is already in use at the CANVAS on two projects and is available for free download at http://www.canvas.uiuc.edu.
Tickets To The Sunset
2005. I convinced Ticketmaster's web outlet, Ticketweb to give me a promoter's account and allow me to post a tour of Sunset dates and times, as if the sun was going on tour. Tickets were available to the general public for purchase at Ticketweb.com. Audio field recording of the sunset by famed recording engineer Steve Albini was available on iTunes, Real, Napster, etc. Posters by Jay Ryan still available at http://www.ticketsToTheSunset.com. This piece is about commerce and machine-mediated nature and draws from such influences as Turrell, Flavin, Duchamp and RTmark™. [Sunset here.]
Tornado Landspeeder
2005. An application for a CAVE environment, this is a 3D data visualization using texture maps from the landscape where the tornado data was generated. Exhibited at iDMAA, Orlando, 2005.
(windgarden 2D)
(windgarden 3D)
Windgarden
2001 (2D), 2005 (3D). Digital representation of a "wind garden" - Champaign, Il airspeed is retrieved via random weather server and displayed as movement. Cursor movement also affects display of garden. Try hitting "g" (for 'God') and see what happens. 3D CAVE version exhibited on horizontal immersadesk at iDMAA, Orlando, 2005. Launch Shockwave. (please note that for security reasons, shockwave version will only display random windspeeds.)
Sun Clock
2004. We have split up our days - our lives - into an artificial grid of numbers which map onto other schedules; work / factory schedules, TV schedules, movie schedules, even further removed from nature. Why have we done this? Historically, factory owners developed watches in order to keep the workers in line. TV network schedules now are our new clocks.
As an answer to this, Sun Clock uses a color system to denote passage of time. Each hour is mapped to a median color representative of the sky on A Nice Day at that particular time, and each minute the color is interpolated from the previous hour's color to the next hour's color. The color of the bar on your screen slowly changes over a period of 24 hours. Predecessor to Tickets To The Sunset. <launch shockwave>
Graduate Thesis
My graduate thesis is called "The Sun Also Sells: On Machine, Nature and Commerce." It focuses on Tickets To The Sunset and Windgarden and my need to create doubly ironic experiences of "beauty."
"As all aspects of our lives become increasingly mediated by technology, our perception of reality, beauty, trust and authority become distorted. They are commodified and altered by the machine which mediates them. Combining the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics which states that the determination of one measurement of a pair distorts the other quantity, and Marshall McLuhan’s famous missive, I state here that the medium subverts the message. Poetically, we stare at the finger pointing to the moon instead of the moon itself. "
Here I suggest it is possible that a new beauty, a new happiness can exist, powered by mechanical / electronic subversion of nature, then go on to quote Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, lyrics from critically acclaimed rock band The Clash, Baudrillard, The Yes Men, The Barbie Liberation Organization, Hal Foster, www.nazi.org, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, and other classical favorites.
Thesis available upon request.
(full printout)
Exploration of Digital Mediation and Archival
Part I: Genesis
2001. Portion of the beginning of Genesis translated
along a path of 9 different web interpreters. Continuing the path of translation
of the bible. This and "Constitution" (following) are part of
an exploration into how digital mediation and archiving will affect the
myths and texts which our current society finds most important.
(detail of printout)
Exploration of Digital Mediation and Archival
Part II: Constitution. 2003. The Constitution
of the United States of America appears on a website but each time it
is accessed, a random letter "degrades" or is changed, as if
the document has been trodden upon, or has been the subject of a child's
"telephone" game. This piece deals with issues of electronic
degradation and mis-translation of ideas.
http://www.rosemarshack.com/projects/constitution.html
Performative Navigational Devices
2003, 2006. Fist Punching Wall drives Narrative. I sit with my back against a brick wall, a video projector shines a narrative above me. The narrative progresses as I bang my fist against the wall.
2003. Outside Air Pressure to Audio to Visual. Experiment with windchimes outdoors, audio is translated via microphone into sound wave data, changes in amplitude drives graphics on CRT inside building.
2003. Camera-Captured Foot Movement Drives Visual. Using a camera on the ground and video capture software, translated change in motion (feet moving) to "kick up" a bunch of words on a screen.
Eggpass
2004-ongoing Social network trace project. 12 eggs were created with Sculpey clay, inscribed with a website and a number and handed out in class. Recipients are told to visit website and input their egg # and location, then pass egg to a friend.
Inspired by discussions on the topic of social networks, Eggpass was designed as a method of tracing social networks which utilized the web's convenience. It is hoped that through their extended travels, the eggs will reveal a surprising series of connections and will form a community of their own, very different from communities formed by typical means.
Stanley Milgram's work on the Small World Problem is an obvious precursor to this project. But while Milgram's studies involved sending a package to a specific recipient through personal connections in order to determine the links between two strangers, Eggpass is meant to be open-ended, it is our hope that the eggs will continue to be passed from friend to friend for an extended period of time, building up a complex web of relationships.
There are also similar online projects involving the release and tracking of objects such as: http://www.phototag.org (disposable cameras passed from user to user); http://www.bookcrossing.com/ (books left in public places for potential readers to discover); http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ (dollar bills tracked by serial number).
Landspeeder
2002-5. My first virtual worlds work at University of Illinois. Working under Urban Planning Professor Varkki George Pallathucheril, I developed a 4-D data visualization of a large dataset for a 3-D Virtual Reality CAVE environment. I began building this project in VRML, then ported it to Macromedia Director (3D Lingo), then to C++ and OpenGL for use in a CAVE environment. http://www.rehearsal.uiuc.edu/people/rose/landspeeder/
Newspeeder
2004. This was a really interesting experiment, it grew out of a fellow student's idea for creating a SimCity game from a newsgroup. Richard Valentin, Jakob Meltzer and I collaborated on a project and demoed it in the Beckman CUBE at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is a newsreader which builds a building for each thread, the larger the thread, the larger the building, and the redder the building, the more flames (offensive language) the thread contained!
Enhanced-CDs
1994-present. The president of Reprise Records asked us, "for your next record, would you like to make an Enhanced CD?" and we said, "Sure!" and he said, "Well, go ahead and do it then! You're computer programmers; you know how to do that kind of stuff, right?" Challenged, I quickly learned how to author CD-ROMs and incorporate data into audio CDs (resulting in E-CD format). My first interactive program, a demo for our 4th record, "Junior Citizen" won the American Center For Design 100 Show Award.
Because our band created our own E-CDs, we created some of the most robust, data-filled, honest content available to our fans. Our first E-CD was called "RTFM" and I filled it with everything from tutorials on creating your own record label, webpage, etc., to guides to Situationist thought. [Quicktime VR sample]
The next E-CD we put out was by our electronic alter-ego band called Salaryman. (This band was more popular overseas so that is where we spent most of our tours.) The idea for this e-CD was to make a 'busy-box' for adults; it was to be intriguing, playful, but at the same time, irritating. The title of the record, "Karoshi" means "death from overwork" in Japanese, and I wanted to apply that idea to an interactive piece; to force people to work on sometimes interesting, sometimes banal interactive vignettes, getting across the concept that "work" can be tedious, banal, and sometimes, inconsequential.
My partner Rick Valentin and I now run a design company (Xcodesign) and we help various critically acclaimed independent record labels (ThrillJockey, Touch&Go) create E-CDs for their bands.