Author: peatmoss

peatmoss-Dream

Link: https://noonmark.itch.io/hart

This game is based off an old, old dream I had years ago, which I can’t really remember a lot of. All I can remember is a gathering of small animals on a mountainside and a specific shade of green. This game is an experiment, a first foray into making something interactive. I think there are a lot of things I’d want to do more with, particularly with expanding the environment and “story” or interactions, but this was incredibly fun for my first try. For critique, I’d really like feedback on the legibility of the sprites/artwork, and how people feel the game flows–if the space is too hard to navigate, too “easy”, fine, etc. I’d also be curious to hear what people think of the atmosphere, and the music! I made the music myself using some garage band tools in an afternoon and I’d appreciate some feedback there. Thanks!

 

peatmoss-NFTExperience

I personally decided to refrain from minting an NFT. Even on hic et nunc, I feel uncomfortable participating in this new trend because I know the vast majority of people doing it aren’t being as careful as we. Unfortunately the curb effect hasn’t hit yet for NFTs, and I don’t know when it will. I’m going to wait until things are clean, regulated, and moderated. I’m also abstaining because quite honestly, this isn’t the market for my art. I currently am really happy with my freelance growth, and the community of artists I’ve become acquaintences with through video game fandoms and Twitter. My personal art is either sequential, design documents for projects to come, or things that I don’t want sold. For my for-sale adoptable character designs, I enjoy having a more direct interaction with the seller than just slapping it up on an auction site. More power to those who enjoy and need that sort of distance, but right now this is where my zone is. I don’t have the time, energy, or audience to reach into another space…and still, a space that I don’t ethically find it worth it to do so.

peatmoss-LookingOutwards3

https://bitfuzz.itch.io/the-falling-star-bitsy-poem

https://haraiva.itch.io/under-a-star-called-sun

^^ Two of the games I looked at that stuck with me. I’m a sucker for star and astronomically themed games, but honestly I liked these for a lot more. They’re good showcases for the stuff you can do in Bitsy I think, with the pixel art, the music, and the interactivity. In particular, Under a Star Called Sun displays a good game design element of highlighting what you can interact with/advance the story with. I think thats super smart and helpful when the game has limited pixels!

peatmoss-NFTReading

Position: I find NFTs ethically deplorable, but that doesn’t mean I’m not intrigued by them. I want there to be equitable and engaging marketplaces for all kinds of creators, but I just don’t think this is it. The issues with theft, traditional fine art snobbery, environmental destruction, homogeneity, etc. are already presenting themselves in the largest marketplaces. I can’t get behind it, not right now. I look forward to, and hope to see the efforts to reduce NFT carbon footprints actually succeed.

Pros: With proper regulation and a cultural shift towards more eco-friendly currencies, I could see this being a great thing for artists who want new markets to sell their work. In addition, I think this has interesting potential as new mediums are able to be introduced to these platforms–for instance, I could imagine this being a really fun way to sell limited time zines, especially with the edition function. Fully techy and digital art has some interesting potential as a medium as well, like how paper creases can become its own artwork, how something moves along a blockchain could as well.

Cons: This piece from the Flash Art article really stuck out to me, “If profit is going to be the primary motivation for growth and research, then one of our strategies must be to make it more profitable for businesses to act responsibly.” This has been the case with every rampant capitalist structure, business, and culture since the industrial age came into being. That unfortunately includes the fine art world. As things stand, there is an incentive to make as much money as possible, damn the consequences. However, there’s no use for that money if our planet dies! I’m not being hyperbolic. There’s potentially already huge issues with the gulfstream (it’s broke thanks to climate change), the Amazon Rainforest (which has reportedly reached its capacity for carbon intake and is now, in combination with the logging industry, releasing more carbon than it absorbs), and our whole worlds ecosystems. We have incredibly limited time, and I for one would rather we focus on getting a true respect into our culture for digital marketplaces and artists without having to resort to such an extreme cost. We all know here that digital art didn’t poof into existence with crypto, there are and have been artists making a living (to varying degrees), online for decades. There is already a cost to making art online, lets not raise that bar to include our whole world. (this does not get into all of my critiques of crypto-art, I just wanted to focus on this for the purpose of what I engaged with in the reading.)

peatmoss-NFTImmersion

Works I feel strongly about.

Hand Touching Stones, by Eva Papamargariti: https://foundation.app/evapapamargariti/hand-touching-stones-3249

This is the kind of gif that should only exist on Tumblr while you’re scrolling through your dashboard. It has a charming stupidity and absurdity to it which I admire, but of course it just has to be sold using ether. It baffles me as to how it exists, and I want to know more about it and why it was created.

Captivates me: Pain: https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/objkt/9589

This piece is the kind of thing I’d see literally made by children when they first start out on MSPaint, posted to their first Deviantart page. It’s either a true piece of angst or is a wildly authentic feeling recreation of one. I lean towards the latter given the title, description and tag are all “Pain”. Even so, it brings me back to an earlier time, and given its on hit et nunc I’m a little less irritated by its existence. If the artist can really sell it for 5 tez per edition then more power to them.

I detest: Yosemite Falls by Coldie: https://superrare.co/artwork/yosemite-falls-1201

It makes my blood boil to see this person wax poetic about a time before fires ravaged the west coast, how the clouds of this piece symbolize a better future, etc etc etc while engaging actively in using one of the more environmentally dangerous cryptocurrencies. This dogshit piece is selling for 15 ether @ list price. Visually, it’s perfectly serviceable. In fact the clouds and burnt edges of the piece could mean a lot if it wasn’t destroyed by its own oxymoronic, ridiculous ignorance.

Dog “Dark Companion” by Konogatari: https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/objkt/9475

This one is charming!

Overall, the landscape of NFTs seems to be dominated by easily consumable artworks. In my experience, I didn’t come across a piece of art that not only made me think (there were a few of those), but invited me to think. (Both about it and the world around us.) There were a lot of tech demo looking pieces, many of which were rough enough that it was almost uncomfortable to look at. Under this umbrella were also generative artworks, but many just looked lazy and uninspired.

I found a lot of photography as I was scrolling, but much of it had those ‘sketchy’ filters overtop to make it look artsy. This feels like instagram except it kills even more of the environment. These marketplaces with perhaps the exception of hic et nunc make me sad because there could be some incredible opportunities for artist friendly marketplaces online, but we get this instead. Anyways, back to the photography: it’s all wallpaper shit. A high contrast photo of a contact lens. A picturesque view of the Tetons. It feels, again, bland. There were some photo collage works that looked more thoughtful and less like screengrabs from google images. I actually felt something looking at those.

I think right now, the vast majority of NFT artworks are cashgrabs. I don’t have any high opinion of what art should be, I don’t need to be chastised for thinking art should be x, y or z. These marketplaces, primarily Superrare and Foundation, really seem to be catering for the easiest dollar. The lowest apple hanging on the tree that looks ripe. It’s frustrating, and I want to see more illustrative works but at the same time..I think that would be even more frustrating. I can feel a bit of separation between myself and works shown there because we do different styles of art, if the work I do was represented more obviously there, I think it’d just be more heartbreaking.

peatmoss-Creature

Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/HJ00lL1uz

Creature Name: Thing of the Mists
Species: Unknown, colloquially known as Walkers

After seeing how sort of janky the handsfree library can get, I really wanted to create something creepy that could, feasibly, “glitch” out of its own reality. This creature is built off Connie’s base example, so thank you Connie! And Golan taught me how to layer the mists. The background is made using a vertex based shape at the bottom for the rocks, and random noise in the background for the far mountains. I think in the future I’d want to smooth things out, maybe make the shapes more elegant? I believe this could add some more character to a new creature. For this though, I’m sorta glad it looks a little weird and janky. It lives at the bounds of our reality, why should it be bound by something like visual continuity?

Videos:

thing of the mists01 thing of the mists02

peatmoss-Loop

Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/ku5LVi1pb

FLASHING IMAGES AHEAD

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It was recommended I -don’t- make a sketch, so the sketches I have for this are only evident in the production of this.

These all had far too many colors. I think my current version still has too many colors–it leaves some artifacts behind on the gif. That also might be due to the compression, but I won’t lie there were some before I compressed the gif. Overall, I think the colors and movement of the gif are disorienting which I was hoping for! However I had some qualms with the transparency effect in the end, and in future projects I want to play with that more. It was fun though to take some time and just play around and get more of a feel for how the values in specific arguments effect colors and movement!

peatmoss-LoopReading

(I read the article.)

What stuck out to me while reading was the passage on how repetition functions in music, and how that relates to gifs. I’m a musician so I’ve grown to be aware of how repetition functions within composing, within listening and engaging with music, et cetera–but here, that same sort of logic is presented as a tenet of gif design/usage. As she noted, there is tremendous learning capability from having an infinite loop there to 1) show information (Visuals helping mental organization) 2) show the order that tasks should/can be completed in 3) provide this information in a fun and accessible way. It’s a brilliant tool that helps our silly brains.

(And as a small additional note, the section regarding Diana Deutsche’s research into vocal tonality and how repetition can transform how we hear something was very cool. It reminds me also of Charles Cornell’s meme arrangements. Here is one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQM4efUUUI)

peatmoss-LoopResearch

As always, WordPress refuses to reveal how I embed. Here is the link to the project from David Whyte that interests me: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf_6xPKBDbH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This interested me because the swirling patterns reminded me of celtic knots, and the movement across the composition provided a similarly smooth transition between shapes and form.

For Cindy Suen, this piece caught my eye: https://cindysuen.tumblr.com/post/142270190310/snapcat

The colors of the background are limited, which lets the kitty really pop with its brightness-this to me, helps the loop function in a visually appealing way.

Each iteration of “colorful sphere moves through rugged/precarious terrain” in this Andreas Wannerstedt piece really caught my eye, I’m a sucker for natural scenery and these looped very smoothly.  https://andreaswannerstedt.se/eternal-installations