Categories
Art Art Computing Free Culture Projects

Composition Generators Are Back

I’ve restored the composition generators. You can find them here:

http://OFFLINEZIP.wpsho/composition-generators/

You can use them online, download the code, or download PDF books containing examples of the output of each generator.

Enjoy!

 

Categories
Art Free Culture

Fair Use Wins In Richard Prince Decision

Patrick Cariou, Yes Rats, 2000

 

Richard Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings have been found Fair Use. This doesn’t mean a lot outside the US, where Fair Use tends not to apply, but it’s still good news.

See more here:

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/04/second-circuit-victory-richard-prince-and-appropriation-art

http://theartlawblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-more-positive-take.html

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/US-court-rules-in-favour-of-Prince-in-copyright-appeal/29342

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/arts/design/appeals-court-ruling-favors-richard-prince-in-copyright-case.html

And a more humorous take:

http://shaneferro.tumblr.com/post/48908136229/a-short-rephrasing-of-the-prince-v-cariou-appellate

 

Categories
3D Printing Art Free Culture Projects

Rainbow Urinals

Thanks to Art Fag City, some beautifully coloured Urinal prints from 3D Printer Experience in Chicago:

3d-printed-urinals-620x339

This is exactly the kind of outcome of digital distribution that I was hoping for, and I love AFC, so I’m really happy to see these.

Categories
3D Printing Free Culture Free Software Generative Art Howto Magick

3D Printing Sigils

100px-Sigil.svg

Sigil CC-BY-SA by bwigfield.

In chaos magick, sigils are visual embodiments of intent used to focus and actualize that intent. Within both supernatural and cognitive theories of magic the principle is the same: sigils are foci for attracting the resources (supernatural or mental) required to achieve the desire of the person who has constructed them.

Traditional sigils are drawings, two dimensional graphical forms, created using magic square or letter abstraction techniques. Contemporary mages have constructed hypermedia sigils in various formats, from comic book series to interactive multimedia installations.

Sigils created by creative computer graphics programming software can be printed cheaply using Open Source 3D printers or online 3D printing services. This opens up a new range of techniques for creating and using sigils.

Image copyright 2011 Marius Watz

Image copyright 2011 Marius Watz

The 3D printed art of Marius Watz shows how data can be modelled in aesthetically appealing three dimensional form, and how the challenges of modelling complex arbitrary data can be met while still creating easily printed models. RIG’s experiments in 3D printed models of user data by distorting pre-existing forms Chernoff Face-style to display a as christmas tree decorations. We Can use these approaches and more (such as model mash-ups and extrusion of 2D sigils) to embody the intent of sigils rather than Web 2.0 data or random numbers in 3D printed form.

azathoth_3d_sigil_letters

Image Copyright Joshua Madara 2011.

Joshua Madara’s 3D graphics sigil creator Processing sketch demonstrates the creation of a virtual three dimensional sigil form. The sigil is line-based, to keep its genetic link to magic square-based sigils, and would not be 3D printable in this form. But the lines could be replaced with cylinders or rectangular beams, with the angles of joins between them limited to ensure that they can be printed without support on Open Source 3D printers.

Probability-Lattice-0304-Final-pieces

Image copyright 2011 Marius Watz

Whether Watz’s organic or machinic forms, more object based approaches or something even more abstract, it is easy to see how this can be applied to the construction of sigils. The mapping of letters (or words) to formal properties or objects by software in order to encode them in forms is how 3D printed sigil models can be produced. This adds an extra dimension of reality and relationality between the virtual and the real that affords a corresponding increase in persuasiveness and richness for sigils.

Part of the efficacy of a sigil may come from the mindfulness and concentration involved in manually constructing and chargeing it. If this is the case then having a machine construct the sigil may work against the sigil’s effectiveness. Constructing the code to make the sigil, and watching the mechanical operation of Open Source 3D printers alleviate this. And a better sigil form than could be made by hand will be a better focus, whether produced by magickal or technological means.

Create 3D sigils using creative coding software such as Processing, or in 3D design software such as Blender. Make the software and model files Free Software and Free Culture (GPL the software, BY-SA the models, wherever you can) and empower others to follow in your footsteps. Upload the model to a filesharing site such as Thingiverse. Then print it using an Open Source 3D printer such as a Lulzbot or a 3D printing service such as Shapeways.

A 3D printed sigil can be used as a focus for contemplation, mediation or ritual. It can be placed in work or living space as a reminder and proof of the reality of the objective embodied in the sigil. Or it can be destroyed to release it into the imagination and the world as part of a ritual by burning or by melting using solvents (but beware toxic fumes). Uploading the sigil to a model filesharing site will spread it further into the world as both virtual and, if anyone prints it, as physical form.

Categories
3D Printing Art Free Culture Projects Satire

Pipe

“Pipe” is a 3D printable model of a classic smoking pipe. It is the latest in a series that began with Urinal and continued with Balloon Dog

Commissioned by me and modelled by the ultra-talented Chris Webber. Chris retains the copyright on it and has placed it under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 Licence.

You can download the files from Gitorious.

Or you can download them from Thingiverse and share images of your own prints and remixes there.

For images and more links see the project page:

http://OFFLINEZIP.wpsho/pipe/

Categories
Art Free Culture Free Software Generative Art Projects Satire

Composition Generators

spots

http://OFFLINEZIP.wpsho/art/composition-generators/


Free Brit Art! [description+slogan] by Rob Myers

– Ruth Catlow.

Rob Myers does Damien Hirst (and Agnes Martin, and Ellsworth Kelly, and Barnett Newman, and Robert Ryman, and…
– Curt Cloninger.

Categories
Art Art Open Data Free Culture

Reproduction Fees

Via The Jackdaw:

The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, has placed digital images of its collections online. So far, so familiar. What is extraordinary is that all the images have been made available for reproduction free of charge, in superb high-resolution format, with no restriction over use… Other institutions in the USA are now considering whether to follow. The British Museum is a major institution that had already taken the same step in the UK. Otherwise the outlook in Britain is depressingly outdated, with museums and galleries, as this journal has frequently pointed out, obstructing not only scholarship but also wider familitarity with their collections throught the imposition of restrictive conditions on use and punitive fees. What makes it worse, much worse, are the outrageous claims to ‘copyright’ that are attached to use of images, preposterously applied to the mechanical reproductions of original works of art long out of copyright. This loathsome practice must stop.

Robin Simon, The British Art Journal

Categories
Free Culture

Ulysses

At midninght tonight, the UK (and EU) copyright on James Joyce’s Ulysses expires. (It’s already in the public domain in the US.

So in just a few hours it will be legal to download this file and load it in your ebook reading device or program here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4300

I think that @ubuwe said it best:

“Fuck you Stephen Joyce. EU copyright on James Joyce works ends at midnight: (via )”

Categories
Art Art History Art Open Data Free Culture Free Software Projects

Art Open Data – Government Art Collection Dataset

I have written a script to download a dataset containing collection information from the UK Government Art Collection site and save it in tab-seperated-value files and an sqlite database for easy access. As the data is from a UK government agency it’s under the OGL.

You don’t need to run the script, a downloaded dataset is included in the project archive:

https://gitorious.org/robmyers/government-art-collection/

https://gitorious.org/robmyers/government-art-collection/trees/master/2011-12-11

The dataset doesn’t feature as many collections as the GAC website claims to feature, but the script does omit many duplicates. This project was inspired by Kasabi‘s scraper, adding the ability to download code and data in an easy-to-use format.

Categories
Art Free Culture Projects Satire

The Mona Lisa Of Disapproval

two

https://gitorious.org/robmyers/mona-lisa-of-disapproval/