robmyerstag:robmyers.org,2009-05-05:/weblog//12009-06-26T21:06:48Zfree culture, free software, free societyMovable Type 4.23-endraw-somethingtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17652009-06-26T21:05:27Z2009-06-26T21:06:48ZThere isn't a web front end for it yet, but draw-something is making a drawing a day at -http://robmyers.org/draw-something/drawings/...Rob Myers http://robmyers.org/draw-something/drawings/ ]]>
Paintrtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17642009-06-26T21:03:17Z2009-06-26T21:05:13ZPaintr is at http://robmyers.org/paintr/...Rob Myers
http://robmyers.org/paintr/ ]]>
Why Net Art Software Should Be AGPL-Licencedtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17632009-06-18T19:17:16Z2009-06-18T19:37:57ZRestricting the study, production, display, preservation or other uses of artworks removes the freedom of those involved in art and thereby damages the cultural, social and economic value of art. Where restrictions take the form of copyright, copyleft licences are...Rob Myers For media-based net art the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence is the best copyleft licence. For software based net art a different licence is required (and Creative Commons explicitly state that their licences should not be used for software).
The GNU GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that people use on their own computers, where it is "propagated" to them from elsewhere by downloading it or installing it from DVD. Software delivered to galleries or collections, or to other artists, counts as being propagated under the GPL, so the GPL is the best copyleft licence for software that will actually be delivered to its users.
Software accessed remotely on a server online does not count as being propagated, even if it is used as it would be locally but through a web interface. To handle this a variant of the GPL called the Affero GPL (AGPL) was created. When you use software over a network, for example through a web browser, the AGPL requires that you be able to acquire the source code of that software just as if you were using it locally under the GPL. The AGPL is therefore the best copyleft licence for software used over a network. This includes software-based net art.
The average piece of software-based net art will use a free operating system, and a free software scripting language, web server and web browser. It may use a free software database and many additional free software libraries of code as well. The difficulty of the artwork's conception or production does not provide an excuse for making it non-free any more than the difficulties of creating the far greater body of work that it build on did.
It is much easier to install and maintain software that is not restricted by its licence and that provides its source code. Art that takes the form of software must be installed and maintained to curate and preserve it. Critics, artists, students and audience can benefit from studying the source code of net art. Even if they don't fix bugs they can learn from it and maybe even appreciate it. And if the server goes down and you don't have a backup, someone else may and will be able to give you a copy back. These freedoms are all protected by the AGPL, giving a strong practical benefit to using it. This fact should be borne in mind when discussing the curation, archiving and preservation of net art as well as when discussing its production.
The support of people's freedom and the practical benefits to artists
from supporting the curation, preservation and scholarship of their
work provide strong reasons for making net art free software. Net artists can and should protect the freedom of the users of their software using the AGPL. See here for details of how to apply the AGPL to your work. ]]>
!sourcetag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17622009-06-15T17:59:02Z2009-06-15T18:00:04ZI'm currently working on a free software microblog bot licenced under the AGPL, which raises two questions. Firstly, who is a user of it? The AGPL only applies to users. And secondly, how can it provide its source code? The...Rob Myers Reading a microblog post (a dent or tweet) does not make you a user of the software that generated it any more than reading a document produced using a word processor makes you a user of that word processor. But sending a message to the bot and it responding probably does count as a user interacting with software over a network.
Microblog users have user pages that could be used to provide details of how to get the source code for a bot. But that wouldn't be a way of providing those details specifically to users who are interacting with the software.
The solution is to allow people to send a message to the bot that contains a command which will cause the bot to respond to that message with details of how to get its source code. This both makes sure that the bot has a clear user relationship with the person requesting the code and provides a mechanism for that user to request the code. It's a minimal use relationship, as the use and the provision of source are the same. But it is use, it does trigger the AGPL, and it does satisfy the requirement that source be made available.
The message is a simple one - !source
The response is also simple, a short URL pointing to the source repository for the version of the code the bot is running (modified versions have to supply their own URL).
Send !source to a microblog bot and it will tell you where you can get its source code. I'll be implementing this in the microblog bot project that raised this question and I'll be implementing it in my art microblog bots as well. I recommend it for any microblog software that users can interact with, and as a way of ensuring that users can interact with the software and get its source code even if they otherwise would not.
(With thanks to Matt Lee and David Bausola.) ]]>
Paintrtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17612009-06-12T20:31:16Z2009-06-12T20:33:49ZI came up with the idea for paintr one Friday morning in 2005 while thinking about Harold Cohen's arguments regarding computer art in his essays and while thinking about the work of Pall Thayer. Paintr's tag line was "art in...Rob Myers Artists don't make art by sitting around waiting for flashes of abstract conceptual or aesthetic inspiration then realizing it in visual form, but paintr does. The original version did so purely using Web 2.0-style web services; colr.org for colour palettes, flickr for (copylefted) photographs, and an online version of autotrace to convert the photographs to drawings. These paradigmatic web services were glued together with the paradigmatic web scripting programming language PHP.
Many of my projects take a linguistic (verbal or visual language) description of art or reality and drive open the cracks in it by taking it literally to making something ironic and unstable. They are disproofs of theories, illustrations of mistakes, but they have a remainder that has its own meaning or effect. Paintr is a good example of this. It's an analogue to art or artistic activity, the realisation of a popular misconception of how art is made. It's an exploit on the idea of art or on the misunderstanding of it.
The relationship that paintr has to Web 2.0 hype is similarly ironic. Web 2.0 makes it easy to create new software by gluing together the public APIs of web services, but you are limited in what you can ultimately do by the affordances that those services provide. Human socialisation can be planned, effected and recorded online in great detail and with great reach through social networking sites, but it is reified and channeled through normatising affordances. Art isn't something that should be created and vended as a web service like weather data or news tickers, but if that's the case what is special about art as a human activity that isn't about human activity in general?
Paintr makes something that isn't art. It's easy to say why it isn't art but it's less easy to see why it isn't art, unless contemporary art of the housepaint-on-aluminium school also isn't art. This entanglement makes paintr about something more than itself artistically as well as socially. Art computing is usually dismissed out of hand by mainstream art critics because of its perceived lack of psychological content, subjectivity, interiority, or affect. Dismissing paintr on that basis is trivial because it isn't even trying to express something. But the intentional fallacy starts to seep through the cracks, and entanglement means that this leads to collateral damage for more critically acceptable forms of art.
Aesthetics is resistant to corporate information culture because quantifying it doesn't capture its value. We can chain back from this obvious example to the more general case of human experience. The supernaturalism of qualia isn't necessary for aesthetics to have an experientially irreducible core. But paintr itself cannot experience this core. It weaves human affect and activity into its activity (colour palettes and images posted to social networking sites) but it is inhuman, beyond even death-of-the-author, a representative of corporate information culture and its exploitative cultural asset-stripping of "cool". It loops back, conceptually. The remainder of this loop is its artistic value.
The latest version of paintr has a back end written in Lisp and runs autotrace locally. It now has an RSS feed, always part of the plan, although it doesn't have an API yet. It's going to expand to start from expressing emotions rather than from abstract aesthetic inspiration. It will probably use Wordnet to map more creatively from its initial tags to the colours and images it searches for. It is becoming increasingly an example of social-network-based collective intelligence programming and increasingly an example of how this reifies human experience. And it looks good while doing so and in order to do so.
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Art Loves Wikipediatag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17602009-06-10T20:16:56Z2009-06-10T20:56:13ZFurtherfield have published an essay by me on how digital artists can work to help improve Wikipedia's representation of digital art by becoming editors and participating in Wikipedia. There's been some good discussion of the article on mailing lists, and...Rob Myers An Artists' Guide For Editing Wikipedia
Wikipedians will notice a curious omission from the article - I don't mention NPOV. I did this deliberately as I didn't want to distract from discussion of the ideas that I have seen people on mailing lists having practical problems with. Which is why the article focusses on notability, sources and deletion. Hopefully it explains some of the rationale behind them and how to work with them to make better articles for Wikipedia, for society and for digital art. ]]>
Artificial Affectivity, Artificial Affectivitiestag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17592009-05-27T19:29:31Z2009-05-27T19:44:20ZArtificial affectivity is the emotional equivalent of artificial intelligence. It is the simulation, emulation, or functional replacement of human affect by software or hardware models. Not neccessarily or just the simulation of emotion, but the simulation of the effects and...Rob Myers In software the history of artificial intelligence has moved from rule based and expert systems through production systems and frame-based systems to statistical models, state machines and collective intelligence algorithms. Even crowdsourcing through Amazon Mechanical Turk is a form of machine intelligence, although an inversion of the original idea of artificial intelligence through the lens of economics.
All of these techniques are open to artificial affectivity. An artificial affectivity (the equivalent of an artificial intelligence) can be constructed using any of them or any combination. They can function as characters in a narrative, performers, pets or shamans. The question of whether a computer can feel can be framed in a kind of affective Turing Test; not whether it feels but whether you feel that it feels. ]]>
Magazine électronique du CIAC - CIAC's Electronic Magazinetag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17582009-05-04T18:32:25Z2009-05-05T20:26:04ZMagazine électronique du CIAC - CIAC's Electronic Magazine.The latest issue of CIAC's Electronic Magazine is now online.I have a review of "Invisible Influenced"by Will Pappenheimer and Chipp Jansen in it, and among the other articles are a review of an...Rob Myers
Magazine électronique du CIAC - CIAC's Electronic Magazine.The latest issue of CIAC's Electronic Magazine is now online.I have a review of "Invisible Influenced"by Will Pappenheimer and Chipp Jansen in it, and among the other articles are a review of an excellent new artwork by Michael Takeo Magruder and a feature on Surf Clubs.Take a look!]]>
Microblogging The Cybernetic Artwork Nobody Wrotetag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17572009-05-04T17:36:11Z2009-05-05T20:26:04ZThe Cybernetic Artwork Nobody Wrote is now microblogging descriptions of possible artworks on identi.ca. You can follow it by clicking here -http://identi.ca/cyberneticOr if you are on Twitter, you can follow its forwarded posts by clicking here -http://twitter.com/cyberneticartYou can get the...Rob Myers
http://identi.ca/cyberneticOr if you are on Twitter, you can follow its forwarded posts by clicking here -http://twitter.com/cyberneticartYou can get the source code (which is a modified version of the original Cybernetic... Lisp version) here -http://robmyers.org/git/?p=cybernetic-microblogger.git]]>
Only People Making Real Encyclopaediae Should Have Free Speechtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17562009-04-26T16:32:56Z2009-05-05T20:26:04ZDave Gerard's comment on Foundation-L neatly encapsulates the problem with Wikimedia's actions and with the defences of them that I have seen so far, stating of the artists -They're performance artists. This is more performance. They fooled the EFF into...Rob MyersThey're performance artists. This is more performance. They fooled the EFF into playing along.http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051509.htmlThe problem is that people's first amendment free speech rights are being dismissed because they are artists.The EFF wouldn't have had to "play along" if Wikimedia hadn't decided, despite the history of first amendment protection for non-commercial, critical and artistic use of trademarks by artists, that art is less deserving of protection as free speech than simple verbal abuse would be.]]>
Wikimedia Hates Arttag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17552009-04-24T19:26:27Z2009-05-05T20:26:04Zhttp://identi.ca/tag/wikimediahatesartI have a lot of respect for the Wikimedia Foundation, everyone I've met from it have been great people and I use their software and projects daily. I was proud to take part in the Wikipedia Loves Art event earlier...Rob Myers
http://identi.ca/tag/wikimediahatesartI have a lot of respect for the Wikimedia Foundation, everyone I've met from it have been great people and I use their software and projects daily. I was proud to take part in the Wikipedia Loves Art event earlier this year. But as an artist I am disappointed and offended by Wikimedia's treatment of a contemporary art project.Whatever lawyers who charge for each letter they send out on your behalf may tell you, and whatever your opinion of contemporary art, there are strong precedents in the US supporting free speech under the first amendment for artists who use trademarks. To demand that artists transfer resources to a trademark holder or face legal action is therefore not just a chilling effect on free speech but legally shaky.The EFF, to their credit, point this out here -http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-And details on an artwork and lawsuit that provide an important precedent can be found here -http://www.barbieinablender.org/Wikimedia's response has been to disparage the concerns of the artists and the EFF -http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/051505.htmlOther web sites have picked up on this, and are supporting the artists -http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-artists-for-fair-use.htmlhttp://freeculturenews.com/2009/04/23/wikipedia-accuses-web-site-of-trademark-violation/The problem with Wikimedia's over-reaching application of their trademark to the material detrement of artists is a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Wikimedia owe the artists and the EFF an apology. This behaviour really is beneath such an excellent organization.]]>
Income - Packet-in-wikitag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17542009-04-22T22:10:46Z2009-05-05T20:26:04ZIncome - Packet-in-wiki.Great list of revenue strategies for musicians in the manner of "How To Get Paid For Copyleft Art"....Rob Myers
Income - Packet-in-wiki.Great list of revenue strategies for musicians in the manner of "How To Get Paid For Copyleft Art".]]>
Web Freedomtag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17532009-04-17T20:14:53Z2009-05-05T20:26:04ZGnash is freeing web users from proprietary software and HTML 5 can free them from proprietary formats.The world wide web became invaluable to society and to the economy because it was based on open standards that were easy to use...Rob Myers
Gnash is freeing web users from proprietary software and HTML 5 can free them from proprietary formats.The world wide web became invaluable to society and to the economy because it was based on open standards that were easy to use and even easier to copy and improve examples of. To protect the value that comes from this openness we must protect the freedom of computer users who access the web through software on their local computer.The biggest current restriction on web users' freedom is Adobe's Flash player and its "swf" file format. Flash has become an unavoidable part of using the web but neither Adobe's Flash player nor its swf file format are free. To make sure that web users' freedom is not compromised when they cannot avoid Flash, the free Gnash swf player has been written.Gnash currently supports Flash 7 and some of Flash 8. It will support Flash 9 later in 2009. If you develop websites to support Flash 7, please test them against Gnash and report any differences in behaviour to the Gnash project as bugs to help improve the Gnash player. Please also let users of your site know that they can use it with Gnash and where to find and install Gnash.As well as playing swf movies using free software there are free software authoring tools for swf files. For ActionScript there is MTASC, and for images and sound and other media there is swfmill. Other solutions are available. With the Emacs ActionScript mode and the GNU Autotools tool chain it is possible to write and compile Flash movies very efficiently.But it is increasingly possible to avoid using swf altogether. Modern web browsers support sophisticated graphics, sound, video and interaction using HTML 5, Javascript and "AJAX". For examples see sites such as this one -http://www.chromeexperiments.com.nyud.net/Rich interactive media experiences that would not have been possible online a few years ago can now be created using open standards. The quality and power of web standards multimedia has increased greatly in just the first few months of 2009. Do take a look at what can be done now, you will be pleasantly surprised.If you can do so, replacing Flash with HTML 5 and Javascript is better than supporting Flash with free software.It is important to use open standards and free software, but it is also important to pass on that freedom. The software that you write in JavaScript or ActionScript must also be free. Richard Stallman's new essay "The JavaScript Trap" explains how to do this for JavaScript, and it is possible to add a source download button or menu option to swf movies. Use Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licence (*not* NonCommercial-ShareAlike) for media, and the GNU GPL for scripts. Or, if you must, CC-BY and the X11 licence.In summary, make sure that any Flash swf movies you create work with Gnash and give any help you can to the Gnash project. Move new sites onto open standards such as HTML 5 and Javascript. And licence code and multimedia in a way that protects web users freedom.
What Art Materials Do You Use?tag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17522009-04-17T20:04:38Z2009-05-05T20:26:03ZSubstratesCopier Paper (archival quality), A3 and A4A4 and A5 hardback wire bound sketchbooks, various.Moleskine sketchbooks, small and largePens and PencilsSanford china pencils (black, red, blue)Col-erase pencils (blue, red)Sanford Mirado Black Warrior HB graphite pencilsSharpies, various black.Letraset Tria markers (black and...Rob Myers
SubstratesCopier Paper (archival quality), A3 and A4A4 and A5 hardback wire bound sketchbooks, various.Moleskine sketchbooks, small and largePens and PencilsSanford china pencils (black, red, blue)Col-erase pencils (blue, red)Sanford Mirado Black Warrior HB graphite pencilsSharpies, various black.Letraset Tria markers (black and two cool greys)Staedtler propeller pencils and lead holder, 2BCaran d'Ache conte pencils and Carres (black 2B equivalent) for life drawing.SoftwareInkscapeGimpSBCLEmacsFedora GNU/LinuxLawThe GNU GPLCC-BY-SA]]>
The Sisters Of Mercy - Forum, 9/4/09tag:robmyers.org,2009:/weblog//1.17512009-04-17T20:01:05Z2009-05-05T20:26:03ZHalf a lifetime ago I saw the Sisters of Mercy at the NEC in Birmingham. It was the biggest and loudest gig I've ever been to, a spectacle that left me unable to hear properly until I got back off...Rob Myers