June 8, 2018
Ozge Samanci
Ozge Samanci is a contemporary visual artist, a cartoonist, and a writer. She makes various installations, and some include crazy coding programs that are innovative. Something many artists are exploring today, as technology evolves, is the relationship between data and art. This piece, You are the Ocean, is interactive as it takes data from the user. This piece needs a head gear that Ozge and her team made that takes the brainwaves of the user and interactively changes the space you are in. The exhibition puts you in the middle of the ocean and changes depending on moods and thoughts. This space could change to a crazy storm ocean or calm waters with clear skies. The audience can do many things to try and see how they change the environment.
Tapping their hands to a rhythm, laying down and closing their eyes, saying the alphabet, or interacting in a game with another person.
Ozge is an artist that is experimenting with the new medium in our generation. Data and coding are opening new possibilities in art that have never been created before. This piece effectively syncs data from one persons mind into a visual form. I believe this is influential as there are many ways to visualize data and her take on it is unique. One could be inspired to turn this same data into another space by altering code and the art. As I continue in my career, projects like Ozge are beneficial in our community as we are exploring new boundaries in art and unique ways to express ideas.
Coding in art is my newest skill and I have similarly created a project that simulates an ocean but it is not interactive like Ozge’s installation. A project I created, Waves Through Waves, takes the data from an audio file and visually maps it into a canvas. The specific audio I worked with was a recording from the beach, so we hear the waves crashing. Then I created a code to specific follow this one audio and map out the amplitudes. Interesting enough the visuals already created a wave. So I did some artistic tweaking and created the following.
Ozge was definitely a person that introduced me into the world of data usage in art pieces. I do feel like her approach of taking data right from the audience is much more advanced. She was directly linking the audience with the work she created. I on the other hand, take data that doesn’t change and mapped to draw an image live as you hear the sound. I felt like our intentions were greatly apart as I wanted to create a satisfying simulation to go with natural sound. Our approach though was similar in the technique of mapping data and coding it visually. I might argue that Ozge and I share a similar visions, as I interpret her work as follows; since the virtual ocean she creates is depending on the users mood, the ocean is whatever the user makes it, and that could be calming and beautiful or chaotic and restless. I however made my virtual ocean beautiful with no element to change that view. So in a sense we are conversating on similar themes but of course varying in intention. There is another exhibition of hers called Fiber Optic Ocean, where her intention is to show how humans selfishly invade natural spaces. Similarly she might be wanting to demonstrate how we have the potential to change our oceans with this piece but it is not as effective as Fiber Optic Ocean. If she wanted to make this conversation with this piece I would have made it so that based on the users mood we either see the ocean cleaner and calmer as opposed to it being clearly dirty in a chaotic environment.
Artist Page: https://www.ozgesamanci.com/#/you-are-the-ocean/
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