erin askew

Think I dress weird now? Look at me then...

2010-09-22T23:39:00.001-04:00

I was 5 when my grandmother crushed my dreams of becoming a famous singer when she said: "Erin you can't sing." After crying myself to sleep that night, I woke up the next morning and decided I wanted to be an artist. Then at the age of 10, I decided I wanted to be a fashion designer. There it went back and forth artist, fashion designer, artist, fashion designer until 2001 when I discovered that I could be both! For my Fine Arts thesis, I made wearable art.

My line of wearable art created to address women's issues was called F Yu Couture. The title plays on the idea of feminism as a swear word. Lets face it, even in 2010, 9 years after I created the pieces it still is. More people than not, regardless of their education, have no idea what "feminist" means and cringe at the word. I won't divulge too deep into the subject but for the record a feminist is one that believes women deserve social, economic and political equality. That's all. I hope that all that I am acquainted with ARE feminists.

My favourite piece out of the series was the "Stay Away Coat" as seen below. I sewed the coat out of shiny black vinyl and punctured it with over 200 2 inch nails. The coat represents the daily "armor" a woman puts on. Don't cat call me. Don't hit on me. Don't hurt me. I'm thinking of pulling this one out for Friday and Saturday nights living in down town Toronto...

Other pieces focused on stereotypes and explored labels- sluts, prudes, the "Wonder Woman" (one who takes on the roles of homemaker, mother, wife, worker).

And only because I promised... Here I am in my couture- a dress defaced with text from Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale".

When I was a young, I made porn

2010-09-16T13:09:00.001-04:00

Among other things. Most famously, I made a porn.

Recently I have been looking through art that I made 10 or more years ago. I have been painting since I was 6, and I went to Western for Fine Art. I have a lot of art. Incredibly, I have found my old work a great source of inspiration. My ideas were untainted then, perhaps more original. Some projects are even worth continuing or redoing.

Hand Job, my first video project created in 1999 is a porn spoof. It isn't particularly silly, in fact you will probably blush when you watch it. It's embarrassing, which is why it works. I have questioned posting it. I tried to edit my name out of the credits, which are written in a font so perversely close to Comic Sans it makes me cringe. Sadly, I no longer have the original VIDEO TAPE that it was made on, and this poor digital copy refuses to let me edit it. So be it. In a way its roughness lends itself perfectly to amateur porn. So here it is, rough, rude and ridiculous- my stint in Porn.

http://www.vimeo.com/14590081

"Why would you waste vacation time on making art?"

2010-08-10T23:17:00.004-04:00

I told a friend of mine tonight that I was going to spend a week of vacation at the cottage making art. He looked at me and said "Why would you waste vacation time on that?" I was shocked by the blow. Instantly deflated. Vacation time IS precious and I don't believe in spending a single day on "relaxing" or hangovers or other such things that my friends allocate vacation days to. I dream about travelling all year long. I yearn to seek out and discover new places. I don't own my own condo or have a nice car. I have invested all my free time and money into travelling. I have chosen to live life to the fullest and I don't regret it. If I could, I would spend a good many weeks per year exploring the earth. But today, TODAY, I have only three weeks per year. I have chosen to spend one of these weeks at the cottage with my mom creating art. We will head up with armfulls of canvases and paints, sketch books and pencils. We will listen to RECORDS circa the 1970's on the record player. We will swim and boat when it is hot. We will paint on the rooftop dock overlooking the lake, drink wine and watch art and horror movies in the evening. We will create.

Is this a "waste" of vacation time? It is not *my* average vacation. Part of me feels the pain of reducing the length of a potential trip to Argentina to accomodate my "art retreat". But I could NOT skip out on this trip. Taking a week to create art seems like less of a choice than a necessity. I NEED this week. I NEED to relocate the love I once had for painting. I NEED to make art for art sake.

Resurrection!

2010-08-09T23:28:00.003-04:00

It's coming. It's time. The blog is currently being redesigned and resurrected. The Erin Askew blog will be host to many new brain farts very soon.

Social Media (a.k.a. plugging yourself in)

2008-03-05T13:53:00.003-05:00

Yes it is true. We are not alone. Not anymore. Why brave the frighteningly vast cyber universe en seule when you can have company? We are social creatures after all. Such was the subject of our latest multimedia pioneering talk by Wayne MacPhail.

The year is 2008, we are now mid voyage in a a cyber odyssey. Web 2.0 has all but taken over. Everything is suddenly clean and clear and crisp. Paths are easily drawn and followed. Extensive tagging and bookmarking mark the trail. We have discovered it is possible to live on the Internet.

The average facebook user is on for 17 minutes a day. The rest of the time in undoubtedly spent on twitter or myspace, del.icio.us, linkedin or digg. Here we are invited to make new connections, reconnect with the lost or just generally stay connected. Due to these new social media devices we all have more friends then ever before. Take facebook for example. I've been a member for about a year now. I have 148 friends and counting. But how many friends do I really have? What constitutes a friend? Are their different levels of friendship? I recently invited 42 people to my birthday party. These are people that I actually see outside of school/work. Now out of these I would say about 10 are what I would consider to be close friends. People I either chat with online frequently or speak to on the phone and actually do social things with. Does that make the others are mere acquaintances? Or should there be a new term for them like "cyber friends"? Some of them exist only in certain worlds for me, at school, snowboarding or kiteboarding. Some of them exist only on facebook for me. We may have been friends once but we will never meet again. Never really care again. My old friend from university found me and added me on facebook, we were the greatest of friends once. She is now married with a 6 month old daughter. I still recall the old friendship and invite her for dinner, parties, the opera. But she can't really exist outside of facebook. I know this now. Our worlds are too different. She will only ever be a cyber friend. Perhaps I should invite her to twitter....

Nobody really reads in the cyber universe. We are all too busy scanning and filtering information. Where would I be without my google homepage and its convenient rss feeds? How would we know what is happening in that strange domain we call reality if it wasn't for the news feeds in our google reader letting us know?

We can live happy fulfilled lives without ever having to speak to anyone. The shy, the introverted, the hopelessly unhappy can be reborn and live a different life on second life. Here we can virtually date, explore, buy virtual goods, and fall in love. Really, a brave new world. Sounds pretty geeky really but anyone can see the appeal. Where do I sign up?

Of course the question is do these things actually make us more social? Or do they just offer a place to hide? A way to avoid physical interaction? Why call when you can type? Why visit when you can just click on a profile? Everything in moderation I suppose. Who knows, but without facebook would I have had 28 happy birthday wishes? No, of course not I would have had 10.

From Dino's to Nessies

2008-02-10T14:18:00.000-05:00

On Friday we visited the ROM to meet with the director of New Media, Brian Porter. Our journey took us from the Jurassic era to the modern world. We began in the digital gallery playing with the installed touch screen based computers designed to give children an interactive learning experience. These screens allow the user to choose between Egyptian or Canadian historical explorations. Within each of the respective selections the user was then able to choose an artifact, zoom in or out as well as rotate it to see a complete 360 degree view of all of its sides. The digital gallery also housed a 3 projector based screen to display accompanying films created by the media department as a teaching device for chosen topics.

Next we moved on to the new dinosaur exhibit to visit Gordo, the infamous Barosauraus and his skeletal friends. The new crystal structure that houses the new home of the dinos has been the subject of much architectural controversy. I for one am a fan of the new space and I love the look of the crystal addition. It is like a metaphor of the ROM itself. The crystal represents the emergence of old and new technologies in a way that demonstrates to the viewer that both are necessary and meaningful.

The dinosaur gallery also offered interactive kiosks for visitors to view information on the creatures. These new kiosks were very slick looking with a very Apple like design. They were only single touch screens though, not the fantastic new multi touch experiences that have been making headlines. I found the navigational buttons unnecessarily small, which would definitely make the experience more challenging for small children or visually impaired people. Brian mentioned that it is still a work in progress, perhaps they are still working out display issues. I was quite surprised to learn that the kiosks were designed by Overdrive Design , a company that I have previously worked with during my time designing at Karbon. What a great client to have. Of course I had to immediately send a message to James Wilson, the owner of Overdrive to congratulate him on landing such a gig and for a job well done. I think sometimes we forget to praise and instead focus on criticism.

After our ROM experience we employed the ancient form of transportation, walking, and made our way to Steve Mann's studio at Dundas and McCaul. Steve Mann is well known for his ventures as a cyborg. Indeed, he was wearing his fantastic eye piece which displays content directly to his eye via a laser. I'm not quite sure how it works but I imagine it would be along the same lines of these experimental internet displaying contacts. Speaking of eyes, he mentioned that within the next 5-10 years we would be downloading our eye prescriptions from the internet which will electronically adjust as needed. I'm not sure about this, wouldn't it just be easier for us all to get laser eye surgery and permanently correct the problem?

The main attraction of our visit was his hydraulophone. This water organ produced impressive sound quality and was fun for everyone. It seems to bring out the kid in everyone. Who wouldn't like the idea of actually playing with a fountain? It is truly a great interactive invention. What a great way to excite people and encourage them to interact and learn with their environment. Hopefully we will be seeing more of the tadpole shaped Nessies in parks and public areas soon.

All in all we had a great day of visiting multimedia pioneering in action. Hopefully can generate some inspiration from this and apply it to our own plethora of projects.

Moving towards Mobile

2008-01-23T10:22:00.000-05:00

In today's multimedia pioneering class we had James Eberhardt as a speaker. The discussion topic was mobile.

It is really fascinating that the world of mobile browsing really hasn't changed very much in the the last 20 years. Many of us are still hesitant to use any of the communication features additional to voice calls on the phone, mainly due to the fact that other forms of communication just aren't very user friendly. Even with T9, I personally find texting a huge pain. Keypading long messages is very time consuming and frustrating. I do use it in certain circumstances- when hearing/ making noise is a problem, and to avoid expensive day time charges. It fascinates me that many people would rather use the cumbersome text function than make a call. This is probably due to its additional function- that it serves as a way to avoid actually connecting with someone and keep the interaction less personal. When will we see an easier way to mobile computing than typing on annoyingly small devices?

I was quite disappointed to hear that Flash lite 3.0 is not Actionscript 3.0 compatible. Why would this be? It was so recently released (October 2007), significantly after the introduction of AS3 to Flash. The discovery of this drawback is quite an annoyance. I find it comparable to the incompatibility of Internet Explorer to web standards. Wouldn't it be nice if one day if we were able to keep up with all our changing technology? Is it too much to ask for a technology synched world?

One of the newer developments that I find to be a step in the right direction are the 2D bar codes. Of course, this forces everyone to have a camera phone (why did I think that was unnecessary at the time I bought my phone?) But still, it will make mobile browsing on our tiny devices a heck of a lot easier. Think of the possibilities of relevant information at just one click. TTC/metro routes and schedules saved, directions or details to a store or event advertised in a newspaper or poster campaign. The possibilities are exciting and infinite. This new development will create a greater need for the cell phone and may convert those still holding back from this important technology. Yes, hard to believe that not everyone has a cell phone. I'm not sure why not. What is the use of a home phone when a cell phone is personal and mobile? I haven't had a land line since 2001 and I certainly don't miss it.

James also mentioned the use of GPS in mobile devices and some really nifty software to go along with it. This is a technology too expensive for my modest budget right now but I would definitely be interested in it. I especially love the idea of the sports tracker software. Although I am not a jogger, I would love to use something similar to track my snowboarding runs. While I would never go out of my way to purchase a GPS device solely for this purpose, it is something that I would use if the option actually came with my cell phone. Or perhaps I should hold out until more developments in ambient intelligence are made.

Speaking of cell phone add ins, if the future is to bring us a chance to minimize the number of gadgets we all have by providing us with something multi-purpose, I am all for it. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels that there are just too many THINGS in my life. That's right, I said THINGS. Recently I was forced to downsize in order to move my many things into a tiny condo of less than 600 sq ft. That's 600 sq ft/ 2 people. In the downsize I discovered old cell phones, manual film cameras, a Polaroid camera, automatic cameras, an old digital camera, an old printer, a zip drive, cd burner, hard drive, endless ac adapters, remotes etc. And this was just the electronic stuff. Not only have my "necessary" purchases helped to fill up landfills in our already dwindling environment but these remains of times/technologies past have only helped to increase my own personal stress by their accumulation in my house. If we can indeed transform our gadgets to be multi-purpose, I'm sure we'll all be better for it. The iPhone is a good start, but we can do more.

Flash in The Can Talk

2007-12-10T17:49:00.000-05:00

Last Week, Simon Conlin from Flash in the Can came to speak to our class. While the slogan on the website reads "Inspire, Educate, Challenge", our talk focused on only one thing: Inspire. While I really enjoyed hearing about what creative and interesting things other flash guru's are doing, I was a little disappointed that we did not learn anything specifically about Flash in the Can. Simon left me no choice but to google FITC and learn about it on my own! It's too bad, I believe the festival itself would have been a point of interest to many people in the class.

For anyone interested here's a littlebit about FITC. 'FITC is a Canadian company that produces design and technology events. Established in 2002 the company has held successful events across both Canada and the United States and is expanding overseas. Events are held in: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Chicago, and Hollywood. The FITC name was derived from the first show that was produced in 2002 called ‘Flash in the Can’ -- a reference to Adobe’s (previously Macromedia’s) Flash software, and CAN taken from Canada. This inaugural event focused strictly on Flash, but the scope of future events has broadened with the explosion of interactive media to include all platforms including mobile, installations, motion graphics and games. ' For more information see their website.

From an artist's perspective, I did enjoy his presentation of the interactive video work by Zack Booth Simpson. It reminded me that IMM can be art for art's sake in addition to its obvious commercial uses. The strange thing is that when I was in art school, I wanted to design. Now that I am in a design program I miss art! While I could make some of my projects conceptual art pieces, I doubt very much that they would be strong portfolio pieces the end. Such is the constant struggle an artist has between making a living and making art.

One of the coolest things Simon showed us was Adobe's interactive billboard. What a great new way to advertise! The Adobe billboard basically created itself as people walked by it. The graphics that emerged were fantastic. The motion and sudden appearance of these images captivated the passerby's. Amazingly, people danced with it, played with it and just enjoyed it! I would love to make something of that caliber!

Simon also mentioned that IMM can be thought of as an art movement. He's right. It's as fresh as cubism was in the early 20th century but with out the hatred and backlash from society. We are lucky to be entering this field while it is still relatively new. A decade from now I doubt we IMM designers will be able to enthral and engage an audience the way it does now. Even today in it's infancy, I feel like IMM design is getting a little repetitive. Evidence of this can be seen in the exhibits of this year's Nuit Blanche. How many times must we superimpose audience images onto a rare or fantastical background? I left Nuit Blanche feeling that IMM designers need some new ideas, some creative ideas! Speaking of the festival, how do artists apply for the event? I can't seem to source this information on the net. Wouldn't it be fantastic if some of the IMM graduates' art were accepted into the festival next year?

Reinventing Rainbows

2007-10-16T20:22:00.000-04:00

Talk about pioneering! What Radiohead is doing with their new album Rainbows is crazy, revolutionary and ridiculously inspiring. Eliminating the record label and self releasing/selling via the internet (for now anyways)?! Letting the fan/downloader decide how much to pay?!! Woahhhh! I'm sure the record labels must be hating it, same with i tunes. I wouldn't be surprised if they made more money distributing the album this way than they would have with a traditional release. What this could mean for the way music is distributed and sold.....

Yeah! A wickedly unique and unconventional idea! Although I believe I do smell some crafty guerilla advertising at work, unintentional or not....

A fascinating gesture...

2007-10-12T17:02:00.001-04:00

Today we had a presentation from Vincent of Gesture Tek. I was immediately fascinated that this groundbreaking technology originally started out as a kind of personal project of Vincent's. His background as a musician, dancer and juggler inspired him to create a unique experience through the simple idea of evoking music through movement. He developed the gesture technology in order to play virtual instruments, create visuals and jam with a band. I find it amazing that an invention that was initially created for artistic and entertainment purposes has transitioned into such an important and forward thinking technology.

I'm sure that we would all agree, the most fun application that we witnessed was the virtual game. All it takes is a few seconds of standing in front of a video camera and magically we are immersed into the game itself, appearing as a character on the tv screen! With a swoop of a hand, I was shooting targets, with two swoops I was flying through the air like a superhero! I can't wait for this technology to hit the mainstream. It might just make a gamer out of me! With Sony and Microsoft already licensing this technology, hopefully I won't have too long to wait. Wii anyone?

I have to admit, I am a big fan of the floor. The Gesture FX ground floor enticed me to dance, swim, even clean (sneaky Ford and Epson, very sneaky!) Anissa and I felt that it should be in a dance club and seriously, it really should be. Vincent mentioned that it has been implemented in this fashion in clubs in Japan. As Japan is my vacation dream spot, I vow to one day find this Gesture FX ground floor club and try it out! Who wouldn't love it?
Looks like someone else thought this was a good idea a few years ago ....Siggraph 1998

The Gestpoint technology is another application that I am really excited about. As a sufferer of carpal tunnel syndrome for more than 5 years now I see this as a way to escape the keyboard and mouse at some point down the road. Although to truly find release from these binds I think that voice recognition software would have to further develop as well. Perhaps with both of these technologies working together in the mainstream...?

One of the most talked about gesture based technologies right now is Microsoft Surface. A fantastic interactive table that allows multitouch input for navigation, gaming, displays and much more. I wonder how many people know that this technology was pioneered by Gesture Tek with their Illuminate table. It is not quite fair that Microsoft is getting all the credit now is it?

I am not sure how the next multimedia pioneering presentation can compare to this. The possibilites of gesture technology are fascinating and endless. Who knows, maybe we will live the lives of the futuristic characters from Minority Report very soon.

Other interesting links: Gesture Bar, Gesture Phone

Visualization Studio

2007-10-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

Finally, our first multimedia pioneering talk with Song Ho Ahn of the Visualization Studio. The small research studio is a mostly government funded operation that develops applications for e-learning, medical, engineering and scientific research.

The first thing presented to us was an e-learning application made for the police department. I was excited to see that this application was developed in Flash and xml as this is exactly the kind of thing that we will be learning. While not all of the elements of this application are considered to be "pioneering" techniques, I was still fascinated by the capabilities of flash which I feel I have yet to really discover.

I enjoyed the 3-D animations that had been developed in Ogre and I am eager to look into this program a bit more. An example of this software was used in animations created for a government website called Canadian Mysteries in History. Unfortunately, the actual animation as seen on the web is quite poor in resolution and doesn't quite have the same visual effect.

The "F.A.C.E." image recognition application was pretty interesting. Image recognition is still a developing field with many possibilities. Seems to be quite a hot topic these days, interesting to many people in our class. It still seems a bit sci-fi to me right now but I am sure the future will bring it along. For more information on this check out the many, many listings on you tube.

I love the Immersion Studios interactive movie experience. Three screens with 3 projectors, audience interaction through tablet pc's, and branched video. Too bad it wasn't functioning properly but I think we all got the idea. Unfortunately for the public this type of experience is presently too costly to produce and will not be available to us any time soon. Looks like the companies that specialize in this just can't stay afloat.

There were a couple of terms floating around during the presentation that I have heard of in the last few weeks but still have no idea of their meaning or context. I'm going to take this opportunity to clarify a couple of these...

API- Application programming interface- is a source code interface that a computer application, operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program ahhh thank you wikipidia!

Flex- Ok, this word comes up often when I am googlying Actionscript 3.0 but was also mentioned by the Visualization developer, lets see... according to adobe "Adobe® Flex™ 2 is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems."
-doesen't that just sound like a miracle? How do we use it? Will it really help us with our internet lives?

Other interesting links- Visual recognition through a cell phone?
Face recognition software as a password

Until the next blog....

Finally Clarity!

2007-09-23T23:17:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it! I am finally "getting" actionscript 3! Phew! I feel like I have conquered dyslexia!

Brave New World

2007-09-06T19:04:00.000-04:00

How truly strange it is to be suddenly projected into studentdom! Just last week I was earning an income, hating my uninspiring job and keeping up with the Jones'. This week I am penniless, happy as a kid in a candy store and actually encouraged to create and think. Did I do the right thing? How will I survive for 8 months without money? Honestly, I don't know. However, I get up every morning thrilled to go to my new job. How many people can say that?