Month: June 2005

Categories
Free Culture Generative Art Projects

Viki

A proposal for a project I’m unlikely ever to do. A hyper-image Wiki based on SVG.

The interface is SVG and JavaScript. Any element of any object is selectable. Groups get selected first.

You can select any art and make a link to a new image, taking the art as the basis for the new image, uploading a new image, or starting with a blank image.

You can make any selected art into a re-usable symbol.

You can annotate, tag and externally link any art.

Each image or symbol has its own history, diff and discussion page.

Ideally, the interface would eventually be a full vector art editor, or at least allow for external vector art editors through an open API.

Categories
Generative Art

Drawing On Enclosures

Projects that use content enclosures as source:

flickr colr pickr

flickr rainbow

Squared Circle Poster 2

Google Maps Wallpaper Maker

Abused Amazon Images

Fifty People See

Yahoo Image Search Art (see halfway down the page: Web Pages, Image Search)

And howtos/libraries/APIs:

Google Maps Hacking

Abusing Amazon Images

Flickr API

Yahoo Image Search API (No Google Image Search API yet!)

Yahoo Creative Commons Search API

Categories
Aesthetics

Silhouettes

Via Web Zen and Boing Boing:

http://www.roving-artist.com/classic/index.html

Categories
Aesthetics

Notes Toward The Expanded Image

images are representation (Wark) is query (Google) is search (AI) is culling (shape grammars)

an image is not a degenerate text, such claims are ideology

a bicycle is multi-dimensional (flatterland). projection (rendering) is reduction of dimensions through transformations. an image is a projection. a picture or a painting is not necessarily an image.

is a unicycle a reduced-dimension projection of a bicycle, an image of a bicycle? 🙂

images, projections are indexical, if lossy. transformation, if lossy.

performance, installation, social action may be images.

images are aesthetic (indexical ideological choices).

Adornian aesthetic isomorphism. indices, indexing

quantization, search, query, state-space, dimensions, discrete/continuous, syntactic field.

Categories
Projects

draw-something: holes, holes, holes

draw-something already draws holes.

It draws holes in a rectangle, the rectangular ground of the format. We just see them as figures.

Those figures can extend outside the ground, but that is a conceptual wart. They should be limited by the bounds of the format, which is easy enough to do.

They are drawn outside their skeleton, which means that holes holes should be as well. I didn’t like this idea, but it solves two problems. If the skeleton is a polyline, how do we draw ‘inside’ the end lines if they don’t join. And if the skeleton is a single point, how do we draw inside that? Always drawing outside solves both problems.

If we always draw outside, either the skeleton’s points must always be far enough from their enclosing form that they won’t intersect it, or the drawing algorithm must be capable of handling cases where the line of the skeleton is coincident with the line of the enclosing form.

So. The next point on a drawing must be:

> minimum distance outside the ‘hole’ poly (the skeleton)

> minimum distance inside the ‘figure’ poly (the ground or the parent figure)

Which means the points of the hole poly must be > minimum distance *2 from the ‘figure’ poly, or we drop the minimum distance and either go for a max either side or a max only?

Categories
Generative Art

Kuro5hin on Relational Mathematics

A Kuro5hin article on an artificial intelligence program that can do analogies, with a very interesting take on “Relational Mathematics”.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/26/192639/466

Analogical reasoning is considered very important for creativity, and therefore modelling it is very important for simulating creativity.

Categories
Free Culture

Liquid Culture

Liquid Culture 5.06 was a well-organised and very engaging event. Concentrating on Free Software and Free Culture together is absolutely what is needed. Overviews of Free Software, software patents and Creative Commons licenses were given, with case studies of “Open Source” software from Goldsmiths and free culture from Remix Reading. Siva’s dissenting response at the end was excellent, and nobody really disagreed with him. 🙂

The speakers were all good, the discussion was heated, and I met Tom and Ed from Remix Reading. Who are cool.

One person who knew me from a mailing list said that they expected me to have a big beard. I must change my net presence. I don’t even have a goatee.

I handed out some CDs of my work that I’d made and grabbed lots of flyers and leaflets.

Video of the event was recorded but that doesn’t seem to be online yet. Various people had materials that I think should end up online but the only URL I have to hand is:

http://www.alexhudson.com/talks/intro-free-software

for Alex’s talk.

Liquid Culture is definitely a project to watch.

Categories
Free Culture

A Motherlode Of Free Art

10,000 Paintings From Directmedia at Wikimedia Commons. High resolution, public domain. Lots of German art, much of it wonderful.

I hope this sets a precedent, and I applaud Directmedia and Wikimedia. Hopefully this will provide a challenge to the hoarders of art who won’t share. If you shut your culture away, those who don’t shut their own culture away will be the foundation of future culture…