Endnotes¹


Neo Khan
  • *
    •

    Artwork

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    Spotify Visualizer
    Interactive

    Statement During my time at Yale, I’ve been exploring the intersection of art and technology, exploring the limits of web technologies as it pertains to creating artistic renditions and interpretations of the various corners of the Internet. I’ve created work that satirizes and comments on Internet culture such as the “foodie” culture, work that reimagines time, and even work that just simply looks cool. My current project, the “Spotify Web Visualizer” (No, it is not sponsored and has no affiliation with Spotify unfortunately, and yes, I will be working on a newer, cooler name for it), is another product of my adventure into the crazy universe that is the Internet. Most digital artwork seen on the web have been created by users and artists, so my new project instead has a computer making the art rather than a human being. The “Spotify Web Visualizer” is a web app that people can use to select songs from Spotify’s database, upon which the application itself will take the song and data from Spotify’s music analysis machine to create and render a 2-dimensional collage animation, playing with different shaped figures, images, colors, etc. Each rendition of a song will vary, creating a new and unique experience every time a song is played. The question, “can computers do what humans can?”, is the main focus of this experiment as the computer is attempting to create art, a form of expression that has been unique to humans for centuries. Who knows, maybe computers really will be able to imitate humans in the future or maybe I made this project just so I don’t have to make art myself.

    Student

    Spotify, shapes, song, visualization, people, adding, play, thinking, data, gallery, images, music, interesting, curated, pitch, css, colors, user, comment, project
    “…Basically I made the program to generate random shapes with random colors and stuff. And then they can interact in different ways. But every single time you do play a song, it does look a little bit different.”
    “Ideally, like it would be playing at a party or something...like, people can just do it for themselves, do it in, like, small groups, do it at, like, parties, and stuff like that. And then just have like, a rager or something, you know? I was actually thinking about, like, if I can project this on the floor and make it like Dance, Dance Revolution...dance and step around in it.”
    “I've been thinking about whether I do want to make a curated playlist…or make it more free, more like user interactive.”
    “I was pure CS starting from first year, right? Just pure computer science. I was like, I love computers. I love solving coding stuff. But computer science at Yale really sucks. And everyone knows it. It's tough, they teach you a lot of like, academia–things that you don't really need in the real world. So it's always up to computer science students to kind of teach themselves on top of doing all the schoolwork. And I was not enjoying that I wanted more of an application based education.”
    “Okay, so when I was born that's when the Matrix came out you know and the Matrix was like a huge phenomenon. It was just super big. Everyone loved it, especially my family including my uncle. So when I was born my uncles basically like, alright, we have to name this kid Neo. It's such a good name and like the main character is so cool and stuff like that. And then everyone in my family's like, yeah, such a good name and stuff. But my mom's like, I'm not naming my kid after a movie character. Like, we're religious here! So we're gonna give him a somewhat religious name, you know? So My real name is Mahdeen.”
    Endnotes¹

    Neo Khan
  • *
    •

    Artwork

  • 1
    •
  • 2
    •
  • 3
    •
  • 4
    •
  • 5
    •
  • 6
    •
    Spotify Visualizer
    Interactive

    Statement During my time at Yale, I’ve been exploring the intersection of art and technology, exploring the limits of web technologies as it pertains to creating artistic renditions and interpretations of the various corners of the Internet. I’ve created work that satirizes and comments on Internet culture such as the “foodie” culture, work that reimagines time, and even work that just simply looks cool. My current project, the “Spotify Web Visualizer” (No, it is not sponsored and has no affiliation with Spotify unfortunately, and yes, I will be working on a newer, cooler name for it), is another product of my adventure into the crazy universe that is the Internet. Most digital artwork seen on the web have been created by users and artists, so my new project instead has a computer making the art rather than a human being. The “Spotify Web Visualizer” is a web app that people can use to select songs from Spotify’s database, upon which the application itself will take the song and data from Spotify’s music analysis machine to create and render a 2-dimensional collage animation, playing with different shaped figures, images, colors, etc. Each rendition of a song will vary, creating a new and unique experience every time a song is played. The question, “can computers do what humans can?”, is the main focus of this experiment as the computer is attempting to create art, a form of expression that has been unique to humans for centuries. Who knows, maybe computers really will be able to imitate humans in the future or maybe I made this project just so I don’t have to make art myself.

    Student