February 2005 Archives

Daemons

By Rob Myers on February 28, 2005 9:23 PM
I've yet to find any convincing differences between programming and magic. A one-step positivist might argue that programming works whilst magic doesn't. They should try debugging a program some time, or reading Alan Moore's thoughts on magic.

In both cases one is trying to invoke various barely comprehended supra-(or sub-)human entities, with uncertain results. Magic is hacking gods. Programming is prayer to the machine. And this is not poetic or provocation. One of my favourite books is "Managers and Magic", an anthropological look at the faith of business that convincingly casts accountants as priests and shareholders as deities. It is a scathing, funny and illuminating critique. Which is what magic, code, and hacking all aspire to. Or should.

Don't limit your understanding for appearances sake.

Playlist

By Rob Myers on February 28, 2005 9:15 PM
Radiohead: Hail To The Thief
Bloc Party: Silent Alarm
Auf der Maur: Auf Der Maur
Meme: Affectivity
Interpol: Antics
The Cure: The Cure
The Killers: Hot Fuss

MTV2 had a Killers/Bloc Party half hour. Every three years I'm in synch with popular taste...

Flood Fill

By Rob Myers on February 27, 2005 7:44 PM
The algorithm that draw-something uses to outline object skeletons is basically a wall-following pathfinding algorithm such as a simple maze-running robot might use. I didn't just use an algorithm "off the shelf", I painstakingly developed one myself. For draw-something's painting algorithm I'm definitely getting something off the shelf. I'm looking at adapting a stack-based flood-filling algorithm to fill the outlining algorithm's lines with colour. Hopefully I can get something that looks similar to how I colour images without re-inventing the wheel.

AARON's painting algorithm (from the screensaver) looks like a modified flood-fill, only with various constraints appropriate to physical paint. Maybe I will imitate this later, but for now I just want to get something colouring on-screen.

Moment Of Algorithmic Art Nerdishness

By Rob Myers on February 27, 2005 7:40 PM
Up came the channel ident on the television. A hand-drawn looking line snaked around the channel logo at the top right corner of the screen.

"My algorithm does that!" I exclaimed. Then caught myself. :-)

Remix Reading Launch Party

By Rob Myers on February 26, 2005 8:27 PM
Be there or be square. Due to my current situation I'm going to have to be square. :-( But they're showing some of my work, apparently. :-)

http://wiki.remixreading.org/index.php/LaunchEvent
http://www.remixreading.org/node/300

Harold Cohen Article At The Franz Lisp Site

By Rob Myers on February 26, 2005 8:24 PM
http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/artificial_intelligence/kurzweil.lhtml

"Programming gives me the power to work on a higher level of abstraction than painting does, " he [Cohen] emphasizes. "It's as if I work on the level of the platonic ideal, while the paintings the program generates are the earthly instantiation of that idea.

That is definitely something that appeals to me about programming art, the fact that you are working with instantiable abstractions. Many artists produce series of works around the same idea, using code to produce work formalises and allows greater control over doing so.

CNUK Restore

By Rob Myers on February 26, 2005 7:32 PM
CNUK had a server crash.

I've restored my page there.

And I've added some comments on the CNUK social contract.

Quick Check

By Rob Myers on February 23, 2005 9:25 PM
This is just a quick check to see whether Elaine is *really* reading this site. ;-P

Art Computing

By Rob Myers on February 23, 2005 9:24 PM
Kazushi Mukaiyama's course is called "Art Computing", so it's not a term I've created. :-)

Airport Extreme Card

By Rob Myers on February 22, 2005 8:29 PM
I got a wireless card for my iBook. It's easy enough to fit, but routing the net connection through the machine that is connected to the net took some fiddling with the firewall, and too many passwords. This isn't the card's fault, it's MacOSX's connection sharing software, but the combination could be easier to set up.

I'm posting this now using the connection, so it can be made to work. But it's not the simple user experience I expect from Apple.

Bloc Party: Silent Alarm

By Rob Myers on February 22, 2005 8:25 PM
Songs to listen to after the end of a ten-year relationship should probably go something like:

"It's so cold in this house... Like drinking poison, like eating glass."

So 'Silent Alarm' by Bloc Party is ideal for me just now. There's a good measure of dark and acutely observed songs on the album. But there's beauty as well, as in the current single "So Here We Are". It's a good range, musically as well as emotionally. I've no idea who Gang Of Four are, so Bloc Party sound like the Cure, The Police, New Order, and other late 1970s/ early 1980s influences that I can't quite place. Which isn't to say that this is pastiche, it isn't, it's poetic lyrics and driven music that works very well and sounds fresh and young. In some places it sounds a little too young, as if Bloc Party haven't been to Hamburg yet, but that just means that they have more potential for the future.

Recommended.

I’m Blogging This

By Rob Myers on February 18, 2005 8:57 AM
So it's coming up to 10am and the removal men have almost packed everything that's going. Evie's over at her new house with the Nag Champa that I bought her. Helping her move out has been like digging my own grave, only without the promise of any respite at the end. But at least I have been as good as my word. I don't really have anything else I can be.

Ways of Working 2, Appropriation and Collaboration in Contemporary Practice

By Rob Myers on February 12, 2005 8:26 PM
A day symposium on appropriation and collaboration with the likes of CC-UK and Own-IT! in attendance:

Ways Of Working 2.

I'm going to be there.

ASCO-O

By Rob Myers on February 11, 2005 9:09 PM
I like MANIK's art. Their current HTML text work, like Chris Ashley's HTML table work, makes an engaging high art in a medium that you wouldn't expect to have the aesthetic bandwidth.

ASCO-O

MANIK's work constantly makes me revisit my assumptions about the form of art, whilst animating my belief in the continuing possibilities of its content. I hope they get an archive of their email pieces from the Rhizome list together, those are the perfect complement to this. The Rhizome pieces are more like this one:

New Page In Art History (be sure to read the PDF).

Machine Vision Out Of The Box

By Rob Myers on February 7, 2005 8:36 PM
Lemonodor links to an article on the machine vision system used in the Aibo:

Link

Imagine using one of these out of the box as the basis for an art system like a version of Shizuka.

Another UK CC Record Label

By Rob Myers on February 6, 2005 3:03 PM
Another UK CC record label. The license is CC-BY-NC (that's noncommercial) this time, so that's free circulation not free culture:

Fading Ways

NC licensing is still important for correcting the excesses of modern copyright.

Who’s Afraid Of Shape Grammars?

By Rob Myers on February 4, 2005 10:47 PM
shape grammars, L-systems, production systems
algorithmicaesthetics.org (and ae)
shapegrammars.org
algorithmic beauty... online, and site that has other articles
My fear of shape grammars in draw-something
shape grammars in AARON
Turing's man
my own blobs are shape-grammary
no need to fear, then. do what I have done in Illy in code
going forward: shape grammars with evolving, undefined or meta terms

A Human Brother Giorgio’s Kangaroo

By Rob Myers on February 4, 2005 10:39 PM
A human artist who draws objects from their descriptions, much like the AARON of Harold Cohen's essay Brother Giorgio's Kangaroo (pdf ) :

Article At Boing Boing.

Art Computing

By Rob Myers on February 4, 2005 10:37 PM
A comment from Alan Sutcliffe on the various names for art-made-with-computers (private email) got me thinking. Procedural art (Alan's term) is a good description. I quite like the term I've now come up with: art computing. It describes the process and the activity, implying that something might come out of it rather than being a (dead) end in itself.

Barbara Kruger & Creative Commons

By Rob Myers on February 3, 2005 10:14 PM
Renowned appropriation artist (and graphic design distiller) Barbara Kruger uses Lessig's book (presumably Free Culture) on her grad course:

Barbara Kruger And The Public Domain

CC = no lawsuits over image appropriation. If only artists would start using the blimmin' licenses...
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