abstractmachine

• Workshop: L’orientation algorithmique
• Location: Institut d’arts visuels, Orléans, France
• Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley, www.abstractmachine.net
• Dates: 31 March - 4 April, 2008

Yes, I am off to yet another workshop this afternoon. This time to the IAV in Orléans, a design school that is organizing all week a series of workshops, conferences, and presentations dealing with the theme La légèrté (lightness). This concept is obviously following in line with what is probably now 100% of the design schools in the world who have jumped onto the bandwagon of durable design. And yet while I’m thrilled with this turn of events, I wander into this new context with some trepidation; and so as usual I replied to their invitation with an amical quip, reworking the subject of “légèrté” into that of “orientation”, suggesting therein that oppositions such as light vs. heavy do not really grasp the current transformations of space, objects and subjects. In place of such dichotomies, I’m suggesting here that we rework Duchamp’s concept of the “inframince” (ultrathin), taking into account the new forms of re-orientation that are changing our contemporary polis.

On the practical side, this workshop will very much be keeping in line with my steady reorientation to the subject of phyiscalization, and as such we’ll be working with Arduino as much as with Processing.

Here is the full French description of the workshop. I should probably translate it, because there are some essential concepts in there for my current thinking on digital art and design, but I have to get on a train so you’ll just have to use your favorite translator if you can’t read it in the native tongue.

Proposons une nouvelle mesure : celle de la modularité des choses. Encore plus léger que la légerté, l’inframince n’est plus cet espace liminaire qui s’imaginait jadis comme le poids de la fumée — l’intangible comme une sorte d’ontologie indécise. Aujourd’hui l’inframince se définit plutôt dans l’hésitation du neurone avant de se décharger, c’est-à-dire à travers l’esprit intangible qui permet à des choses tangibles de se moduler. C’est le potentiel d’une ontologie à la fois matérielle et varible : « inframince » comme « l’orientation » des choses, « modularité » comme leur « ouverture » sur le monde.

Une approche « orientée » (du design, de l’art, peu importe) se déploit dans un monde physique de plus en plus capable de se réadapter « en fonction de … », « envers … », et « vis-à-vis … ». Pour ce workshop, nous tenterons une avancé vers ce monde en explorant ses machines programmables. Ces machines sont riches mais également complexes. Le but premier sera alors de dompter ses méchanismes modulaires. Pour y arriver, nous utiliserons principalement deux environments de création algorithmique — Processing et Arduino –, conçus tous les deux pour et par des artistes voulant rendre (plus) accessible la création modulaire.

L’intérêt de ces deux environements réside non seulement dans l’accès qu’ils donnent à l’intéractivité, la générativité, l’interfaçage ou la mobilité; ils sont surtout essentiels pour la continuité qu’ils permettent entre le monde des médias et celui de l’espace physique. Car pour nous il s’agit d’un seul et même continuum entre l’algorithme côté machine et son « expression » dans le monde physique. C’est dans ce sens que nous ne parlons plus du composition de l’objet mais de son orientation, c’est-à-dire de la façon dont un objet peut s’exprimer dans l’espace d’une installation à travers un programme informatique ou vice versa. C’est ce que nous appelons la « physicalisation » du monde algorithme.

Bien que cela ne soit pas l’objetif principal du workshop, ces expérimentations peuvent mener à terme vers l’argument implicit dans celui de la « légerté en design » : autrement dit le développement durable et le « poids » des interventions de l’homme. Pour nous, la réflexion sur la transformation du monde ne peut pas faire abstraction des nouvelles abstractions algorithmiques qui s’abattent sur nos territoires, y compris dans leurs dimensions politiques. Pour ne donner qu’un exemple, nous ne voyons pas dans le balisage du paysage uniquement des histoires de localisation, mais aussi de la gestion du territoire. Nous nous opposons en conséquence à toute idée de dématérialisation qui ne s’accompagnerait pas d’une réflexion sur la re-matérialisation; c’est-à-dire l’hypermatérialisation. C’est dans ce sens que nous parlerons d’une « orientation algorithmique » qui approche le monde non plus comme une série d’artefactes plus ou moins lourdes mais plutôt comme un territoire de choses en évolution constante capables d’être mesurées par leur modularité.

Puisqu’il est de la résponsabilité du designer d’être à la fois en phase et déphasé avec son temps, ce workshop propose de répondre à ces constats à travers des expériences concrètes avec les formes directement résponsables, et voir les réponses artistiques qui s’en suivent.

• Workshop: Art du code
• Location: l’École des beaux-arts de Bordeaux
• Dates: 19 | 20 | 21 March 2008

Hi. I’ll be in Bordeaux this week, in yet another workshop on how to make art using code. Here’s the official statement:

• Workshop Art du code par Douglas Edric Stanley
• professeur d’Arts numériques à L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• 25 étudiants (bases en informatique souhaitées)
• Préinscriptions au secrétariat de l’école

Introduction aux pratiques actuelles de la programmation dans le champs artistique. Initiation au logiciel open source Processing. (processing.org)

Artiste d’origine américaine, Douglas Edric Stanley est professeur d’Arts numériques à L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence où il intervient dans des champs tels que l’esthétique informatique, l’interactivité, la robotique, et la programmation, et dirige L’atelier Hypermédia, un atelier qui traite l’algorithme et le code en tant que matières plastiques. Depuis 1997, il a donné de nombreux workshops sur la programmation dans un contexte artistique pour divers institutions, universités et écoles d’art. Il a participé en tant qu’artiste à des expositions liées à l’art informatique, dont la Biennale ICC, Tokyo; le Festival Ars Electronica, Linz; ZeroOne/ISEA2006, San Jose; EnterMultimediale, Prague; Villette Numérique, Paris; Festival Némo, Paris; Ecoute, Centre Pompidou, Paris. En 2000, il a reçu une mention aux Prix Ars Electronica pour son installation à retour d’effort, Asymptote. Il est également chercheur au Laboratoire Esthéthique de l’Interactivité à Paris 8, où il travaille sur les trasformations de l’art face à l’algorithmisation du monde.

I’ve been working with two very handy C++ development libraries over the last two weeks: OpenFrameworks and PAlib. We started working with OpenFrameworks in the Atelier hypermédia last week — I’ll write more about that later. As for the other library, most of you probably will never have heard of it: PAlib is a library for Nintendo DS homebrew development which I ignored for too long. Antonin told me about it ages ago, I should have listened. It’s been a godsend for getting back into development for the Nintendo handheld platforms. And it’s amazingly easy to use, once you’ve gotten everything configured correctly (see below).

Of course, the library can’t do everything I want. For example, I need some pretty advanced sound capabilities, and I’m not sure the included sound functions — which do seem useable — will be robust enough. I might have to give up that library and switch to another one, or it might be the one place where I’ll have to barrel down into the registers, setup interrupts, deal with FIFO registers, etc. myself. But that’s fine, because everything else is so easy: generate the graphics in whatever — making sure you stay within a limited range of colors –, convert those images using one of the included tools (or make your own using Processing or whatever, it’s pretty easy), load that data into the sprite registers, and then let the DS do all the work: all you have to do is set the sprite’s x and y positions and the DS hardware does all the rest.

I’m still amazed at Nintendo’s hardware style. I always loved how the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance were just tiny little processors, surrounded by all these well-chosen chips dedicated to putting sprites and tiles on the screen, and generating the necessary beeps and boops. I’m all for specialized chips and processors, and I think think they’re going to be even more important as we move more as a society towards serious power conservation. So I love these crazy japanese designs and extreme efficiency. But it also amazes me the extent to which the DS is just a souped-up Gameboy Advance. It’s exactly the same strategy they came up with for the Wii: start with the previous platform (Gamecube), and tack an interesting interface onto it with some minor audiovisual improvements. Also, make sure there’s N64-style 3d graphics capabilities. This of course is great for me: all the original registers that I know all-too-well are still there, but with an added processor for handling the second screen, and new functions for handling Wifi, the stylus, and so on. There are also more sound channels, and even some of the old-skool Gameboy sounds are still hanging around (which is really tempting me right now in the current project). But again, I haven’t gotten around to the sound yet because that’s when the real work starts. For now, I’m just having fun finding new movements for the stylus.

It’s also interesting, after sitting through the (eye-opening) iphone sdk video, and now playing around with the DS touch interface, to see how far we have all come on physical gesturing, no matter what the input format. I’ve found myself adding a lot of iPhone-style touch gestures using the very limited input of the DS, which is very eerie for me, because a lot of these gestures hark back to efforts I made back in the 1990’s (remember when CD-Roms were all the rage?). These gestures take on new meaning for me, now that they’ve been placed into this new historical perspective offered by the Wiimote and the iPhone. For example, a lot of the work I did with Claude Faure (see video) was already playing with the physicality of the interface. This was quite clear to us, even then. But that said, this work takes on new meaning now that all these gestures have come of age — or are simply breaking out in all their pimply pubescent enthusiam (it all depends on how much you like or dislike these new semiotics).

The DS, the Wii, and the iPhone are important indicators on where we’re at on this subject. For example, there was a very prescient moment in the iPhone video (you’ll find it at 00:40:23) where the ‘undo’ function is converted from its previous semiotics of ctrl-z (remember F7=SAVE anyone?) into a simple shaking of the device itself. Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking — this is just a gadget-geek-moment, a golly-gee-wow somewhere up there at the level of sophistication of the blink tag (thanks Netscape). And probably after we’ve all transformed into premature parkinson’s sufferers after shaking our iPhones all day — with some new neurological disorder similar to what keyboards did with carpal tunnel syndrome –, we’ll have had enough of all this goddamn gestural computing. But I still find it amazing to think that ctrl-z can be transformed so easily into a simple flick of the wrist. The same goes for the game they showed at 00:41:03, « Touch Fighter ». There, the iPhone itself is the joystick — uh, yeah, Douglas, I think that’s what the guy already says in the video — and it will be hard to go back after that realization, just as it is now hard to imaging gaming (and DJ’ing) after having played with the Wiimote.

Anyway, to get back to the development nitty-gritty, how do you develop for the DS from a Mac? Since I explained this already to Benoit this afternoon in the Atelier, I should mention it here for later reference. You need to:

• make sure you have installed xCode (free)
• follow the instructions of either: Nintendo DS development for Mac or PAlib Wiki Mac OS X (the later worked fine for me)
• download this PAlib xCode Project template and install as instructed (this will allow you to create a new PAlib project from the “New Project” menu in xCode)
• create a new project in xCode and “build” it
• find a workable emulator to test before loading the “program.nds” file onto the physical DS (no 100% solutions here — I’m currently using NO$GBA from Parallels running Windows inside of my Mac, since I was too lazy to get any other emulators working on my Mac)
• buy some sort of programmable cartridge for copying your program to the DS

• Article: Purpose Machines, Douglas Edric Stanley
• Journal: Switch 24

I’ve had a few requests recently, asking me to write about various subjects — gaming, contemporary art, code aesthetics, interfaces, and some other subjects I declined to write about, simply because I had nothing to say. Ethan Miller wrote me yesterday to let me know that at least one of these has finally been published, namely an article I wrote for Switch a few months back, in response to the subject of their (then) upcoming issue entitled “re-purposing”.

As usual, I didn’t really answer the implied subject — artists re-purposing technology for artistic use. Instead, I more or less proposed re-purposing as the definition of contemporary technology itself, and therefore a larger epistemological issue beyond mere aesthetic concerns. Anyway, it has what I hope are some clarifications on how I read programming within the larger framework of temporal machines, and something about its ontological(ly variable) nature.

To welcome me into my new role as an officially recognized Frenchman, my friend Julien sent me a list of clichés entitled « Ça, c’est la France ». All the regulars are there: the beret, a baguette, rosette, the rooster, brie, Yvette Horner and Serge Gainsbourg. And although I’ve never worn a beret, I adore Gainsbourg and will often eat smelly cheeses that “still evoke the scent of the goat’s piss trickling down its leg” (as my wife likes to put it). So, while I’m quite obviously not French in so many ways, I do appreciate a good stinky pleasure from time to time, if not once a day. And yes, I eat yogurt, although no, I do not drink, so no red wine (although I’ll make an exception for champagne). But a lack in oenology skills is apparently acceptable, given how many I’ve met here who do not appreciate red wine either, and even more who find the mere idea of smelly cheeses revolting. So the clichés only go so far.

But there are some things that only the French can truly appreciate, and that you have to have something French in you to even understand. I often cite, as an example, one of my favorite French expressions (and there are many) : « Il a le cul bordé de nouilles » which basically translates as « he’s got an ass full of noodles ». Since I am apparently someone abounding in luck, I have on many occasions been attributed with a noodly ass. Now for those that cannot stand them — for example, the English — this is probably yet another example of what is so profoundly wrong with the French. Indeed, saying that someone has noodles, or perhaps worms (it all depends on your point of view), coming out of their ass does not mean that they are sick, or unhygienic, or just plain out of luck — in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Saying « il a le cul bordé de nouilles » means that you are lucky, and even more, you are overflowing with luck, as in look at that mass of lucky worms pouring out from your underside! Now what does all this mean? How can, for the French, the idea of noodles, worms, hemorrhoids (oh yes), or perhaps (if we take slang into account) good old fashioned penises, evoke someone being lucky — even more, someone being abundantly full of luck? This, my friends, is one of the mysteries of being French, and the mere (moral, even logical) ambiguity of it all: the quite decisively indeterminable nature of what the hell that possibly means is also very much part of the definition of what it is to be French.

Accordeons:

Gainsbourg, the « vieux dégeulase qui pue »

Gainsbourg, patriotic version:

Gainsbourg, le classique :

And while we’re on the subject of kidneys, how about hips?

Leading us of course to Dalida:

Perhaps that’s all it is, this idea of France, une chanson d’amour? — ah now there’s a cliché :

But they do love their « chanson populaire ». Before American Idol, there was L’école des fans…and Claude François:

Oh, Claude François is not heady enough for you? Ha! Even Gilles Deleuze admired him. And let us not forget, in our nostalgic tour de France, the required selection of famous French intellectuals:

Ah, that’s it. Freedom. Existentialism. Mai ‘68. Vive la résistance! But what would all that be without José Bové’s moustache?

And what would France be, without it’s laches, it’s cowards, its smug pretention?

Or, perhaps, none of that matters, and it’s all just about Carla. That is probably one place where we can all agree, only in France:

Le jour de gloire est arrivé ! / Contre nous de la tyrannie, / L’étendard sanglant est levé, / L’étendard sanglant est levé, / Entendez-vous dans les campagnes / Mugir ces féroces soldats ? / Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras / Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes ! / Aux armes, citoyens / Formez vos bataillons / Marchons, marchons ! / Qu’un sang impur / Abreuve nos sillons !

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I received my French nationality papers today. Since a lot of people have been asking me, I should make it clear that I now have two national songs, as the French do not require you to renounce your previous citizenship to become French. Qu’un sang impur…

To continue my recent work on protocols, I made this little checksum mosaic software for my new national song : La marseillaise. I haven’t exactly figured out what to do with this checksum image yet.