Art From Hate
An Interactive Experience In Unfair Bias
by Edwina Maynard
The creation of my project “Art From Hate” stems from my constant interest in different bias in today’s society. At first I was only interested in completing the project, but as I progressed through it, I began to develop a deeper meaning. I want this project to give audiences incite on how it feels to be in the other person’s shoes. Using an Xbox kinetic I will project viewers into an abstract experience.
In the 21st century we are so advanced and modern, but for some reason we still seem to have many degrading bias about people, gender and sexuality. Yes, we are all entitled to our own facts and options but, this way of thinking is only turning us into unproductive members of society and it’s really revolting. The simple actions of hate or treating someone unequal only because they are not like you on the outside. I wanted to shed light on this topic because, this is a part of the world we live in and we can definitely progress without it. Showing people this wrong doings and allowing them to become tolerant and accepting is the only way we can combat this.
At first, the basis of this experiment was simply to use hate tweet data from twitter to create a visual representation of it. As I progressed with the project I realize that there was no depth and it had no substance. In another class that I was taking we were exploring how you can evolve ideas making them more complex and visually appealing so I applied this concept to “Art From Hate”. Now the basis of this project is to allow viewers to blindly go into the tolerant artistic visuals and, by the end come out with an understanding on the topic at hand.
I used the hate tweet data from twitter, using the pinkeshbadjatiya/twitter-hatespeech github code (https://github.com/pinkeshbadjatiya/twitter-hatespeech). Twitter is a platform app where people from all around the world can post whatever they want, whenever they want. This is why I decided that this was the perfect place to receive my data from.
I tried multiple times to apply the code but, it prove to be too intricate to decipher so I decided to use the spreadsheet data downloaded with the code as my data. I was able to create a visualizer and get it working perfectly, going on the beat of the song that I had chosen (I’m not racist – Joyner Lucas). Then I applied the tweet data to the color causing the data to be shown as different color scenes. This allowed audiences to see how much hate data is on twitter.
When I got done with this part of my project I started to notice that it needed more substance, so I started to revamp it. I developed this project, which was at first only about racism and sexism, into a large-scale project about racism, sexism, homophobia, trans phobia, and hate.
It still consisted of creating beautiful art from the hate of the world but, this time it would place the viewer into the experience. Using a projector, the abstract art will be exhibited on a screen and an Xbox kinetic will capture the viewer and place them into the scene as a silhouette, being distorted and changed with each different scene.
I am executing this project using The Adobe Suite and Touch Designer. The adobe suite is being used for the art aspect of the project; I am making the abstract videos in After Effects. The vectors in the video are from Illustrator and, they were all put together on Photoshop before taken to after effects. Touch Designer will be used to distort the silhouettes and to place them in the abstract videos properly. Also to attach the actions to buttons in order for viewers to select which experience they want to go through first. The experiences will not be labeled with their titles, in order to give it an air of mystery.
Hopefully this project allows viewers to open their mind and realize that we’re all the same. Different skin tone, gender, and sexuality are only subtopics within the main topic of human. “Art From Hate” should be an attention-grabbing exhibit showing audiences what it is to be looked at when people view you a certain way.