Event Blog 1 - Amy Franceschini
On February 13, 2008, a New Media Lecture was given by Amy Franceschini. Franceschini is an accomplished artist, professor, web designer, inventor and activist. Her work focuses on notions of the environment, research, sustainability, and the conflict between humanity and the natural world. She founded the Futurefamers (1995) and Free Soil (2004) organizations and is deeply involved in the activities of the Green Party.
Some of the works shown that I found to be particularly interesting were her Botanical Gameboy (2004). In this project Franceschini attempted to power a Gameboy system with lemons. The project would required thousands of lemons and about five acres of land to function. Though this project ultimately failed Franceschini still tried to look at the positive. Another major part of her presentation involved the process of learning. She said that failures are also positive and they are an essential part of learning. I think that this project is important because it is an interesting juxtaposition of the natural and the man made. It is also a telling thing that these two did not go together in this project.
Another major aspect of Franceschini work is research. She worked with a New Media learning resource center called Playshop in 2004. This was a free program in which anyone could be involved. During this time Franceschini and other groups of people would examine how we use technology and the history of computer gamming. She likes collaboration because it gives you the opportunity to take advantage of other peoples strengths and learn things together. One of the projects that she worked on during this experiment was the Fingerprint Maze in 2004. In this collaborative project a system would be used to map out one fingerprint so that it could be used a s a game. The ridges and contours would be translated of your fingerprint would be translated into walls in a game environment. You could travel around your own fingerprint. Again this project shows a fusion of technology and humans.
Some of her more political works included a website where you could deface the current president to see what people were thinking. This website was set up as a visualized discussion board and an online community. People had their own avatars and the site influenced sociability and community. All the avatars were placed on a continuum so you could visually see the discussion.
Many of Franceschini other pieces are heavily involved in Internet based work. Her Victory Gardens project in 2007 examined the role of gardens in people’s lives. She modeled this project after Victory Garden of the World War II era. In this project she influenced people to make there own gardens. She tracked these people on her website and she archived the data that she collected on www.sfvictorygardens.org. This project was able to create an online community that was bringing people from remote locations together.
I enjoyed this lecture and would like to see more of Franceschini’s future pieces.
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