Collagerator is a multimedia artwork on a mac/PC hybrid cd-rom.
Do-It-Yourself-Art! Collagerator blends Art'O'Matically the boundaries of an art piece, a toy, and a multimediainstrument. You can make your own collages on the screen out of image material that is carefully chosen for you. There is also possibility to print the collages from the application. Collages made in various exhibitions and festivals around the world can be also seen in the Internet at www.imal.org/collagerator. The work plays with high and low culture, combines media imagery with scientific mappings, asks who is the author, flirts with trendy design, wonders about the stereotypical roles of males and females in media, pays respect to, begs, steels and borrows from many sources - offering possibilities for over 25 million collages but still manages to stay coherent. See the imagebanks and explanations on a pdf document. (2.3 Mb, printable)
Collages can have two or three layers. Choose images with the keyboard to the different layers. Each letter (a-z) corresponds to a certain image-bank which contains 20-60 images or animations. Each image-bank has its own charasteristics that are common to all its images. The first layer of imagery consists of media images from advertisements, tv, fashion magazines, net porn, kitschy postcards, art... On top of the first selected image, two layers of commenting imagery can be pasted: on the second layer are mostly line art drawings depicting scientific, biological, anatomical, art historical etc. motives, together with abstract 2-d objects. The third layer crops or frames the image or adds effects to it, distorting and colorizing it. New imagebanks can be added to the work easily later, even by other people. This would make the work a collaborator (future project).
Audio adds a fourth layer to the collage. Mixing everyday sounds with musical loops, the soundscape is also built as musique-concrete-collages. This new depth allows users to sink in to the work more deeply. The user takes an active role as she becomes the one making the collage. Her own opinions, attitudes and experiences affect the way the combined layers produce meaning. Playing around with the work for a while also produces collage of continuity - or montage of images appearing after each other as in the classic theory by Sergei Eisenstein.
Images are chosen with the keyboard. Pressing the key again hides the image. The current image is chosen randomly out of its image bank. Pressing Return or clicking on the collage with a mouse makes the collage. After that the user has the choice to print it, export it to the Internet or go back. The Internet address is also written on top of the printed collage.
So far collagerator has been exhibited in continent, Brussels-Helsinki, Belgium-Finland, 8 SEP - 12 OCT 2000, Online@Offline festival in Pärnu, Estonia 24.-25. NOV 2000 and Rencontres Internationales Henri Langlois (RIHL), international festival and competition for film and new media schools, Poitiers, France, 5 - 11 MAR, 2001.
Credits:
Design, image manipulation & coding: Tomi Knuutila (cv)
Sound: Lost Weight
Contact:
Tomi Knuutila
Mechelininkatu 23 b 54
00100 Helsinki
Finland
gsm. +358405024115
tomtom@mlab.uiah.fi
Special Thanks:
University of Art and Design Helsinki Medialab, Helena Sederholm, Milla Moilanen, Yves Bernand
Collagerator is my final thesis work. you can read the whole paper in pdf (Finnish only).
