abstractmachine

• Installation : Déplacements (français) / Déplacements (english)
• Artist : Manuel Braun
• Exhibition : bbb, Centre régional d’initiatives pour l’art contemporain, Toulouse, France
• Dates : October 2006
• Developped at : Aix-en-Provence School of Art
• Video: Déplacements

This is a work that Manuel Braun developped for his Diplôme Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques in June, and which has just been exhibited in Toulouse at the Centre régional d’initiatives pour l’art contemporain. It is a 5 x 5 pixel array made out of computer fans. Each fan represents one pixel which together make a very singular display. On that display runs an artificial life program based on Coway’s famous Game of Life. It‘s a beautiful work, quite mesmerizing and yet very simple. When Brigitte Bosch from the bbb gave me « carte blanche » to select the work of a young multimedia artist for an exhibit she was preparing, I chose this work — principally because I wanted to defend a certain tendancy we currently have been exploring in the Atelier Hypermedia : i.e. the move away from purely screen based work by introducing visual algorithms increasingly into the phyiscal space. But I was also particularly happy with this work having watched Manuel’s research over the years on the infinite variations one can inflict on the idea of the « pixel ». I felt with this work that he had evolved from the research stage into a coherent phase plastique. And finally there is the fairly obvious (and humorous) reversal of the role of matérial/mimetic component, a sort of digital form of the old support / surface debate.

I don’t usually talk about other people’s work here, using this blog mostly as an easy form of communication. But I probably should talk more about my students’ and former-students’ works, as their work is so influential to my own, especially given the very particular structure of the Atelier Hypermedia. I’m also mentioning it here because this work was the first final-year diploma installation to use Processing and more importantly the PicoIP Processing library Stéphane Cousot and I developped last year for Jean-Pierre Mandon’s PicoIP project. When I look at the work we were doing with Macrodobe’s Director and the work we’re now doing with Processing, I think the change was definitely worth it.

• Exhibition: ENIAROF 0.2 (Arcade + Performances + Installations + Mudwrestling!)
• Exhibition Dates: 1 + 2 December, 2006
• Exhibition entrance: Free for all ages! (as in software, as in beer)
• Organizer: Antonin Fourneau
• Workshop: ENIAROF 0.2 Video Arcade
• Workshop Dates: November 21-24 & 28-30 + December 1 & 2, 2006
• Workshop participation: By application/invitation only
• Workshop organizers: Douglas Edric Stanley & Antonin Fourneau
• Location: L’atelier Hypermédia, Aix-en-Provence School of Art
• Website: ENIAROF
• Blog: ENIAROF Blog
• Info: Interview with Antonin Fourneau

Ok, here we go again…

Well, Antonin has made it official: The Eniarof 0.2 Video Arcade Workshop is now open for applications. We will have students participating via my Atelier Hypermedia along with those of the Atelier de Recherche Interactives from the national design school in Paris (ENSAD). Added to the mix, whatever stragglers want to join the party and are ready to follow the DOGMeNIAROF.

We will be designing quick & dirty ENIAROF style « attractions » for the Video Arcade section of ENIAROF 0.2 (December 1 & 2) - which will be held again this year in « lovely Aix-en-Provence »®™. All works will use Processing, Arduino, Wiring, or some combination thereof. Attractions must work starting December 1st and run until late December 2nd. Attractions should be interactive, but there are places within ENIAROF for non-electronic based attractions, so all that is negotiable, as is the available space. That said, we are asking for stragglers to bring their own equipment, as space is already tight, unless they want to team up with another ENIAROFer on a collective project with already-provided equipment.

Code will be kept small and simple, and imagery as economical as possible. We have found particularly inspiring recent low-bit commercial games, such as the excellent Bitgenerations (video), as well as installations such as Loopscape by the always brilliant Ryota Kuwakubo. These signs reassure us that there is still a simple (and elegeant) branch of playable machines.

For more information, Antonin gave an excellent interview at Regarde explaining what ENIAROF is, describing some our recent exhibits, and previewing what the next workshop should be like : [Interview with Antonin Fourneau]. You can also read more about ENIAROF via Marie Lechner at Libération/Écrans [Arborescence, art numérique à Aix-en-Provence et jeux à Marseille] and these two articles on Fluctuat : [Villette Numérique 2006] & [La nouvelle fête foraine]

• Award: Prix Argos - Lewis Carroll
• Project: The Plot website
• Recipients: Jean Cristofol, Fabrice Gallis, Guillaume Stagnaro, Douglas Edric Stanley & the students of the Aix-en-Provence School of Art
• Information: 22nd International Scientific Audio-Visual Conference / CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research

As everyone knows, the most pleasureful prizes are the ones you are awarded without any effort on your part. I have no idea who these people are (I’ll invesitage further when I have a little more time), but they have just awarded our Plot research group the Argos - Lewis Carroll award based on the following criteria :

Le Prix Argos - Lewis Carroll récompense un site web pour son originalité et sa convivialité, l’imprévu des rencontres et des informations offertes, son souci d’instaurer un dialogue transcontinental et de créer des affinités électives sur le web.

Which basically means in English that our website is original and friendly (you’re welcome), we offer unexpected ideas and information, we open a « transcontinental dialogue » (hmmm, difficult to do in French) and we create new affinities via the web. Sorry for the crappy translation, I’m in the middle of something else.

Thank you CNRS for that unexpected suprise. Now you’ll excuse me as I get back to my research…

• TV Show: Tentations.06
• Station: Canal+
• Date: 4 November, 2006
• Time: 12h05 - ???

Christophe Ecoffet sent me an email to let me know that the documentary he recently produced on Régine Débatty’s visit to Villette Numérique 2006 will be aired on November 4th some time after noon. It is only a 4-minute documentary fit into an hour-long show, so don’t be suprised if you have to wait until the end of the show to catch Régine. I have no idea how I’m going to record it, because my digital recorder only works on over-the-air digital, and I just realized that they don’t have Canal+ on that system yet. I don’t really watch TV — I just ask my computer to record Métropolis every saturday night and send it over to my iPod. TV is just one or two shows for me. If someone could record it… I actually have done tons of interviews for television, probably about three our four a year since about the year 2000, and I never seem to get a copy.

As for the « petite histoire » : Christophe asked me to analyze on camera Régine’s work, which I did, and I was predictably very nice and polite about her blog because honestly I think she’s doing something great over there at we-make-money-not-art. But I was also in a grumpy mood (I don’t like television), and hadn’t gotten much sleep (apprently my hotel doubled as a brothel via the room above mine - thump thump thump). With no sleep (and no you pervert, no sex either) the grump took over and I dissed on everyone else, including the camerman (who was even grumpier than me) and rambled on about all sorts of subjects. It was pretty incoherent probably. I don’t really know what Christophe kept in and what got cut out. 4 minutes is pretty short, and the documentary was about Régine, don’t expect to see my unphotogenic mug all that much (probably for the better). Maybe I don’t need a copy after all ;-)

Oh, and what is Tentations.06 you ask? Well, we have this guy here in France named Ariel Wizman who is pretty much the ultimate in cultivated-insolent-cool-obnoxiously-sohpisticated-lowbrow-hipsterism. Apparently he has a new show on Canal+, but I stopped keeping up to date with his activities ever since he left Radio Nova. So it’s fluff, but usually fluff about pretty cool shit and usually worth watching. That said, I haven’t watched any of his documentaries in ages because I’m a little to busy to waste my time in front of the TV. If I want to watch crap, I’ve already got YouTube.

I should mention that just after the interview, Régine introduced me to Jean-Baptiste Labrune who is a researcher working in « Creative Epistemology ». Jean-Baptiste is apparently creating a Dorkbot Paris, which is great news. He’s a very affable fellow and definitely hip to what’s cool in interactivity, sensors and whathaveyou. So we’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Update : I was busy working and wasn’t able to tape the show. Did anyone by any chance tape it?

Ok, just to let you know that although I personally think my ^3 instrument is pretty frikkin Airwolf, Andy Polaine of ex-Antirom fame caracterized it as « dull » along with everything else at ISEA2006. Actually he originally thought ISEA was dull, but when Karl D.D. Willis insisted, Andy was more than happy to throw me into the briar-patch too. If you’re saying « Karl who? », he’s made some cool stuff you should check out on his website, and nicely used some of my current theories in a recent paper entitled « Creative Interactive Experiences as Production » for the The First International Symposium on Culture, Creativity and Interaction Design [link] last month. I forgot to thank Karl back then, so it’s now a done deal. Anyway, back to Andy’s rant, I thought it was pretty inspired, so I decided to made a comment. We now have a very polite back and forth going on you can check out here: [Interactive tedium from ISEA].

Apparently I might not be so « dull » after all, but even if I am, that’s fine. Work like « ³ » is designed specifically to ask questions about the future of instruments/interactivity. If I fail, that’s part of the process. This type of work is not designed as a final « product » which is now the next step for the abstractmachine project.

Ragnar is yet again travelling as one of the winners of the Prix Möbius Nordica 2006, this time to Montreal where he will present his Webwaste project. As I am the co-developper, and not the artist, I get to work in the background and not stress over presentations and local network troubles. That said, we’ve had some last minute technical problems brought on by the site host (thanks for a night without sleep!), but hopefully all has been fixed as Mr. Olafsson takes the stage (a few minutes from now). For more information on the presentation dates and times, visit the Prix Möbius website here: [link].

Apparently, there are still fans of the Lexique de l’interactivité I wrote a little under ten years ago. Yikes! I was at the Arborescence festival when I was introduced to an interresting artist (more on her work later) who could recite my own texts back to me. The emotional effect was at once charming and creepy. It is also funny how each fan seems to attach himself or herself to a very different quote, and how it talks to each of them in very different ways — in fact in ways that have little to do with the way I currently view interactivity. Over the years I have occasionally met fans of this old text, but I had thought them long since gone. Apparently not. I also met some enthusiastic readers back in June after the 8=8 concert, so it looks indeed like my old cat just keeps coming back, no matter what I do to misplace it.

So under request, I’ve reactivated the lexique in all its embarassing glory, up on the main abstractmachine_menubar. Just look for the red cursor up on top of any abstractmachine page. I also updated the diagrams with a more appropriate icon to keep the confusion to a minimum.

I should also point out that all the interactive illustrations run in Shockwave which makes things a little complicated if you’re on a MacIntel like me. There are work-arounds explained on the opening page. The annoying thing is that you have to choose between the newer Processing-based diagrams or these older Director-based ones, requiring a brower restart to switch over from one to the other (I actually just keep two browsers open). Although this is rediculous, I find it almost poetically indicative of the state of Director as a development platform, especially when an open-source equivalent has been available for MacIntels for several months, indeed almost from the moment the machines were available.

• Class: Objets orientés image
• Professor: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: L’école supériere d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• Room: Atelier Hypermedia
• Duration: 10 * 3 hours
• Dates: October 2006 to January 2007
• Hours: Thursday mornings 09:30 - 12:30

Busy day in Aix today. I started my new class integrating Processing, Arduino, and Wiring, while all around us rigs were going up for Arborescence. But by far the most interresting was the concert Servovalve gave this afternoon. Amazing, as always. I’m not sure what the students thought of it, although several seemed quite pleased. Whatever the case, starting this year Gregory Pignot (the instigator of the Servovalve brand) will be teaching part time at the school, working with the Atelier Photographie on finally integrating new media into the photography curriculum. I know some of his previous art-direction work which is quite subtle, very « efficace » as they say here. An excellent choice for mixing up photography, computation, interactivity, etc, if you ask me.

So now we have Servovalve, France Cadet, Peter Sinclair, Jérôme Joy, Louis-Philippe Demers teaching here, amongst others, along with all the invited artists for workshops. Um… er… uh… why don’t we have more new media students beating down the doors? Has anyone noticed the tuition fees cost almost nothing (~300 euros!) ? Did I mention the weather?

I also went to go hang out with the very first Atelier Hypermedia student, in fact the one who helped me put it all together, Guillaume Stagnaro. He was preparing his installation for Arborescence with Julien Hô Kim (already mentioned in yeasterday’s post) — their collaboration looks great. Typical geek moment when the two of us get together, Guillaume showed off his Arduino circuitboards — apparently he’s a total Arduino freak with a dozen of them already at work in several installations, including his first non-computer installation (yeah!) at the state museum exhibit that just finished in Pernambuc, Brazil. I’m totally thrilled about this change of direction in his work. And I’m glad to have a local expert for Arduino tips.

Update: I forgot to mention that Guillaume recently built an FTP library for Processing. We decided to put it up on the Hypermedia Processing Libraries page once he cleans it up. On t’attend Guillaume!

For the students that missed this morning’s presentation, here are a few of the links we looked at for inspiration — not all of it Processing based, although most was: Shadow Monsters (guilty pleasure — I love it), Wooden Mirror, Buttons, We Feel Fine (cf. Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything show on « We Feel Fine »), The Manual Input Sessions, Messa di voci, Natalie Jeremijenko, Generator.x, Code & Form, Daniel Shiffman’s blog, Makezine, Beatriz da Costa (Preemptive Media, Pigeon Blog, etc). There were others, but I’ll stop there.

We also looked at a Processing<>Wiring system I quickly put together with the Wiring board. I should also suggest their excellent tutorials, that explain even the simplest of designs such as how to correctly connect a switch : Learning Wiring.

We also debated John Maeda’s Nature exhibit at the Fondation Cartier, which many of the students saw, most hated, and even mentioned gived digital arts a bad name (« ça donne pas envie »). To their suprise, I couldn’t have agreed more. That from such a brilliant artist (come on, accept it, he’s shifted everything for coding|artists) we could have such an amateur presentation (next time he should do it himself) in such an important, high-profile exhibition … I’ll just stop here because I’ll probably get hate-mail. But for the students who didn’t believe me that Maeda can do some interresting exhibits, might I suggest they check out the list of works from his Post Digital exhibit for example, or read through his books which are all at the Centre de documentation, by the way. That should give you all some reading materials until class next Thursday where we’ll start by throwing messy lines around the screen with the mouse.

Information post-only / no rants / just letting people know that Arborescence ’06 is yet again here upon us in « lovely Aix-en-Provence ». The festival is slowly detatching itself from the Art School where it began and spreading out into the city of Aix as well as onto the site of the Friche bel de mai in Marseille where there will yet again be an evening of concerts, performances and installations on the night of October 6th — notably yet another installation-lite of the ENIAROF project. I will not be showing anything personally (well you never know with ENIAROF, but nothing officially anyway, maybe we’ll improvise something, I’ll let you know). Then the festival returns back to its home town the following evening, on the 7th, for the official opening of exhibits throughout the city, where it will be ending up at the Art School for an evening of more concerts, installations and performances. The exhibits last until October 14th, but the best time to see them is on the 7th where you can finish up with the concerts at the Art School which are always very popular.

On the night of the 7th, the 2nd-year students will be showing their Spectacle Psychorotatif in the school’s courtyard alongside several other installations. I actually had very little to do with this project, to my great regret, as it was mostly a production of the students with the core-team of the Laboratoire L.O.E.I.L., and with Jean Racamier and Eddie Godeberge — I was too busy elsewhere. But I really enjoyed the little time I had working with this group of students, especially during their 2-week workshop exploring Processing — they built some brilliant prototypes and installations with very little (if any) knowledge of programming or even what you could do with it. An inventive bunch, I look forward to working with them this year. Their performance for Arborescence will be both simple and complex: based on a structure borrowed from Peter Sinclair’s « Fée Electrique », they have built a three-story multimedia rotating projection tower, with moving video projectors, live sound generation, actors, robots, prosthetics of all sorts, inflatable structures, shadow-puppets, and other literally kitchen-sink utensiles (i.e. there’s a giant bionic man+blender+robot thing). It all spins around and makes noise. Students run around taking pictures of the audience and allow them to take a ride by uploading their pictures into the manege as it spins around. It’s both cool and ridiculous. Performance on Saturday the 7th.

I should also mention two former collaborators have participated in an interresting object called the Voyage Immobile. It will be sitting in the parking lot outside the Friche during the evening on the 6th in Marseille. Although it’s signed « Digital Deleuxe » (I don’t really know their work, in fact); the sound was created by my friend and collaborator Julien Hô Kim who fans will recognize as the the sound designer for both The Signal (2004) and Asymptote (1999); and the interactive image/program was created by Stéfan Piat, who was a very active member last year of ENIAROF, my Atelier Hypermedia, and Plot. Stéfan actually did a clever job taking what was basically a fairly classic commission to illustrate the works of Cézanne digitally for the overbearing/chaotic Cézanne 2006 exhibit in Aix-en-Provence, and turned it into a far more subjective melding of the painter’s works and the locations that inspired him. It is esthétically very similar to his installation forsinicola. Digital Deleuxe then built the structure around these two artist’s collaboration, and also (somewhat pretentiously) signed it as their own. I suppose I’m subjective, but come on, it’s just a container built to house what is basically these two artists more significant contribution.

Update: the Jean-Michael Bruyère / Jeffrey Shaw installation has been moved from the previous site in a centralized park, to the Fondation Vasarely. This does not suprise me one bit, given the difficulties the festival has had in getting permits for anything. I’m only an advisor for the team that produces the festival, but I’ve seen them tearing their hair out for what is ultimately a generous proposition for the city: bringing highly spectacular interactive installations out into the fabric of the city. This is the third imposed location change. Ah, city planners…