11w102 arts102


Noise & Form Assignment
George Legrady, UCSB

January 8, 2011
Assignment Goals
  

To explore ideas and techniques in creating new forms of technological images. What is implicit in the process is the necessity to go beyond and against the conventions of standard practices of Photoshop with the intent to gain understanding of how the medium works, processes and transforms visual information, and through this ritual, to develop new methods of imagemaking.

Expectations This first assignment may be the hardest as a lot is expected. You re expected to learn about digital techn0logy, and the concepts and aesthetics of a specific kind of art that may not be covered in other classes. Please ask me if you dont understand something.

You are expected to brush up on your history of photography, conceptual art, and media arts history as much as possible. Try to work a little everyday. Two good reference resources for this class are: Digital Media Discipline Overview | Legrady Mixed Resources
Assignment Description



IMAGE SIZE



SETTINGS





EQUALIZE

NOISE & BLUR		 Select a couple of concepts that the Leon Harmon article addresses dealing with resolution, tonal scale, blurring, sharpening, noise, and visual perception. Based on those ideas, do a few images each day so that you have enough from hich to choose from to presetn to the class.

Begin with an image from any source, apply IMAGE SIZE scaling transformation to small then back again, and note the settings. Make sure to go through all of the setting combinations through the week.

Scale Styles, Constrain Proprtions, Resample images, Bicubic, Bicubic sharper, Bicubic smooth, Bilinear, Nearest neighbor. For instance, Take an 800x600image and compress it 800x4 and pull it out again to 800x600 and see how the various settings impact on the results. Now reducing it to 80x6 and then back to 800x600, etc. GO through all the possible permutations that show a difference.

In settings, look at the histogram values and see if the image needs to be equalized

In the FILTER menu, add noise, use "uniform" then check with the histogram, see if it looks different from using the "gaussian" setting. Afterwards add the Gaussian blur, then use the "equalize" function in image, adjustments.
Rules


What images to work with



Image Size


Keep precise notes

We are interested in discovering sequences of image-processing operations that lead to "interesting results". This means the following:

Pick images to which you have no allegience in content or style. This is relevant as the purpose of the explorations are to discover methods of transformation, not about communicating something. Best are news, medical, industrial photos that have different visiual materials.

Create 5-10 different images, appx 720x580, or 800x600 that are a result of noise, bad compression, etc. The intent is to arrive at interesting results and processes.

Keep track of how you have achieved your images to share with the class. For each step, write down the sequence and values of settings so that they can be duplicated by someone else.

Posting to Forum Procedure

Project heading

Paragraph Description




Images with captions
  

Each assignment is to be posted at the forum and include the following:

This consists of a relevant title, your name (even though your email is present)

The descriptive paragraph addresses what topic from the article you are exploring in your work, what you did, how, why, etc. Your technical experimental choices must be related to the article, so there is the expectation that the assigned articles have been read and understood. If you have questions, please post comments/questions to the group on the forum.

Then follow with an image, and then give a caption, explain what it is, detailed info as to how you did it. Images should be of a relatively reasonable size, around 800x600x72dpi, or up to 1024x768x72dpi.
Steps in Photoshop to Create Random Forms Start with a blank white, or middle grey or black image.
Go to FILTER, select NOISE, use ADD NOISE to add texture/noise to each of the pixels in your image.
Blend all the pixels by using FILTER, BLUR, GAUSSIAN BLURm using a high value like 52 pixels
(Your image should look flat, blended grey)
Go to IMAGE, ADJUSTMENTS, EQUALIZE to even out the tonal range. Your image should have color forms. If there is any sharp blending, then go back to blur and even out the sharp edges again.
Once you have done this exercise, explore other ways by which to create noise, for instance through compression when you save an image.

Noise Thru Compression

If you save a jpeg with very low compression, the process will add artifacts to your image. If you then open and resave again, additional artifacts will be added. If you continue, you will quickly see how the compression process has particular kinds of patterns that are imposed on the image, and could potentially be of interest in our study.

Grading C Basic fullfillment of the assignment
B Some innovation in technique, aesthetics, and research
A Advanced efforts in technique, aesthetics, and research