Blank-xious by Josephine Cutrara

COURSE:ART 448 Coding for Graphic Design

MEDIUM: Data Illustration; Data Visualization; Video/Film

DESCRIPTION:
I created visual organic, repetitive forms using coding language Processing by Casey Reas and Ben Fry. Using a mouse-incorporated function, the design is controlled by the viewer, giving them the opportunity to create and feel their own compositions utilizing the basis design created using layered bezier curves. Also, incorporating the sound library, Minim, there is sound added to the background and turned on and off via mouse control. The sound is a downloaded piano, instrumental composition “Reverie” by Claude Debussy, meant to encourage the mind to maintain a blank canvas during the display experience: a dark room, surrounded by projection.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
Blank-xious is the space and form in which the mind takes up in a state of over-anxiety. Here, it takes the form of a visual interactive experience encoded by language Processing using both visuals and sound to emulate the feelings of the impingement of anxiety on the mind. Utilizing contrasting the colors of black and white, whilst viewing the rapid movement of a mouse-driven function to control the anti-anxiety driven sound, “Reverie” by Claude Debussy, provides for the aesthetic experience of the mind balancing and compressing stress and anxiousness. Each individual mind processes and formulates the immensities and particularities of anxiety in different ways, which is why each canvas is constructed by the person who holds the device that is projecting the design. Inviting its viewers to control these minuscule, growing forms across the screen that represents the mind, is meant to capture the element of control in ones own stressors and, thus, provide agency against the anxiety.