Senior Thesis (The Completed 8 Shapes)

Senior Thesis (The Initial Sketches)

Screens II is meant to question the idea of alienation remedied through the power of the internet. The discussion that this piece calls on to is based around the contemporary set of values and priorities which arise from our heavy reliance on technology. In response to the physical alienation that we throw ourselves into, granted to communication technologies at hand, I will create an installation in the Falvey Hall lobby. The piece will be an interactive sculpture consisting of eight equal pyramid shaped units. While facing their sharp endings inward and exposing the flat square bases outwards, the shapes will form a perfect square with a void like formation in the middle. Each unit will be constructed out of plexiglass, an led board, light-diffusing paper, programable chips and sensors. The diodes displays will turn on when the senors will detect a presence. The installation can be fully light only when it is completely surrounded by people. This rather simple gesture allows an agglomeration of strangers to share the same space and time while pondering and viewing this work. 

Senior Thesis in Progress (THEORY)

While it has been my major focus and pain, senior thesis has been a great learning and rewording experience. I have had the opportunity to research my topic of interest at greater lengths and depths then ever before. My preoccupation with understanding the influence of technology on modern day culture has finally started to take a discernible shape in my art practice.

To begin, I had to narrow down my research topic. After countless hours of reading and thinking and talking with professors and aimlessly killing time, I have stumbled upon the realization that I am mostly interested in exploring the topic of channeled experiences. In other words, I started to see the connections between the inevitability of the use of the modern day technology in relation to the need for increased and universal ways of communication. Amongst the historical progress, that we are witnessing unfolding faster then ever, lay the undefined relationships of human to human and human to object. They are undefined because they are taken out of their previous context and thrown into a new one--the fast, technologically advanced, globalized, interconnected new world.

IDA Project from the fall semester

I have been thinking a lot about technological advances in the 21st century and how it affects our culture today. This piece is an exploration of that idea. Check out the my website for extra pictures [eroznovan.com]

Machines are an intrinsic part of our lives. Today technology is ever more powerful, fast and efficient and people are ever more reliant on it.The cellphone is the extension of human communication capabilities, the car is the enhancement of human moving capabilities, the computer is a combination of things, i. e. it is the extension of our communication and computational abilities as well as a data storage which is an extension of our memory. The machines play a major role in the shaping of culture and science and even in the shaping of the next generations of people. Thus, the 21st century is the age of the machines in which technology is part of us and we are part of technology. In other words, the line separating what is human and what is machine is becoming increasingly thin. Ray Kurzweil writes in The Age of Spiritual Machines “...human beings will no longer be the most intelligent type of entity on the planet. Actually, let me take that back. The truth of the last statement depends on how we define human...” In other words the definition of human is malleable and constantly changing the same way that culture is. In this case what molds the definition is the emerging world of technologies. So, through this project I question the concept of what is a human and what is a machine. The project’s aim is be anchored in understanding the differences and similarities between the two, machine and human, in the way that casts light upon today’s culture.

This installation allows the viewer to become a machine and the machine to be in control of

the viewer. The work consists of a LCD screen and an arduino encased in an acrylic-glass container. I designed a system that is triggered by one’s approach and demands a response from the viewer. The LCD screen establishes a relationship with the viewer by being polite and displaying instructions for the action that needs to be taken. The instructions are very simple. It directs the viewer to write on the roll of paper installed on a pedestal underneath the LCD robot. This way the 'generator of ideas' is the computer and the executor of the tasks is the viewer. This project will highlight the contradiction of the computer’s ‘humanness’ and the human’s ‘machines.’ The computer will tell the viewer what to do, which reverses the familiar model of interaction in which the human commands the machine.

IxDA Project: Futuristic (within 10 years) Game

Self Portrait Series

These series of portraits play with the idea that we are in a constant dialog with our environment. Thus, we are not separate entities from what we see around us. Instead, we are shaped as beings by what's around us as well as we shape what is around us.

I am planing on adding more to these series. In the next ones I will block the sense of touch and in the last one I will completely exposed to the surroundings.