It’ll run at whatever resolution you’re at.

It’s nothing special and I just whipped it up in OpenFrameworks in just a few minutes so don’t expect much. But it makes for a nice background fishbowl sort of thing, especially on a big flatscreen TV. Apparently, the abstractmachine project is moving more and more into interior decoration ;-)

In a couple hours we’ll be starting a four-day workshop using Julien Gachadoat’s Vision Factory platform. This one’s gonna be purely experimental folks, so come prepared with lab coats, flame retardants, and a whole ‘lotta patience. Julien has whipped up a crazy-but-cool server-client system for collective livecoding using a little OSC + Processing client for delivery of the code to the mothership. Should be interesting.

I made the mistake of introducing class/objects on the final day, in a pretty funny class on fur, hair and tufts which I’ll have to reproduce in some form or other. I should have started directly with objects, as we did in the Algorithmic Design project we initiated last month in Orléans. In my experience, it’s easier to learn class/objects from day 1, rather than day 3, or week 5. Once you’ve become lazy programming spaghetti code, it’s too hard to break it off into objects. No matter how ugly it is, once comfort has settled in, it’s simply too easy to get stuck in linear thinking. That must have something to do with the brain’s natural tendencies. However, if you start from day 1, you stay organized, people tend to understand the code better, and probably can make cooler monsters. Alas! We did things ass-backwards, and the students’ code mastery suffered as a result. But a few of the monsters are fun nevertheless :

Monstres Aixois

I’ll be heading to Geneva tomorrow for a talk on Wednesday morning, followed by a mini-workshop in the afternoon at the CCC. We will be discussing the role of algorithms, software, and machines in the changing political landscape of our contemporary societies. There will obviously be some discussion of code and hacking in there, but I also want to discuss the role I think games and/or « electronic ludism » (i.e. the larger context of play and algorithmic machines) can play in future political/citizen intervention.

I’ll be travelling tomorrow to Poitiers for what looks like a very rich roster of speakers discussing… oh yes… the subject of interactivity. Cough.

Oh, and apparently Ségolène Royal will be giving an opening pep-talk (oui, oui, that Ségolène Royal), which probably has something to do with the fact that she is currently the president of Poitou-Charentes where the conference is being held. You might also have noticed that she is currently making a bid to for the leadership of the French Socialist Party, so I don’t know how much to bet on her appearance.

I haven’t completely finished my talk yet, but from what I have so far, it looks like I’ll be sticking with this resumé that I sent a few weeks ago to the organizers:

L’image du monstre

Il y a trois ans, lors d’un précédent colloque à l’ÉESI sur le cinéma et l’interactivité, j’ai argumenté pour une approche “hydraulique” de l’image en mouvement : une approche dynamique autour d’une image fluctuante qui prendrait en compte notamment la fluidification que les machines algorithmiques apportaient à l’image. C’était une hypothèse intéressante, mais qui n’osait pas aller jusqu’au bout. L’épine du problème était une insistance à maintenir notre relation nostalgique avec la trace photographique à l’intérieur de l’image, face à l’horizontalité des nouvelles formes de stockage comme les bases de données qui ont tendance à brouiller les figures qui s’y trouvent.

Depuis, mon optique s’est totalement transformée. L’objet n’est plus pour moi un simple jeu de re-juxtaposition permanente, il est devenu un jeu de mutation, avec des images-croissance qui poussent à partir de n’importe quelle extrémité de la « Chose ». Il se peut qu’il y ait encore des traces anciennes dans cette image, mais ces traces jouent un tout autre rôle, et nourrissent la bête tout autrement. Je vois désormais dans cette image nouvelle une forme de « monstruosité » qui pousse à l’intérieur des images, et descend jusque dans les entrailles du GPU lui-même, ne remontant à la surface de l’écran pixelisé que le temps d’un court affichage.

Accepter le monstre dans l’image, transforme notre approche de celle-ci, et transforme aussi ce qu’on entend par figure, mimesis, et enfin narration. Cela change également les champs d’exploration qui permettent de saisir plus fermement les phénomènes que je considère comme les plus pertinents pour ces transformations, à commencer par les jeux vidéo.

• Here is the symposium’s valiant attempt at an English translation, which makes absolutely no sense to me, and I wrote the damn thing. The words are right, it’s just that the meaning got lost in there somewhere. Apparently, my French is hard to translate, or perhaps just plain hard to understand:

Three years ago, during a previous conference on cine-film and interactivity at the ÉESI, I put forward the outline for a “hydraulic” approach to image in motion: a dynamic approach hinged on the fluctuating image ,which, notably, could factorise the fluidising import that algorithmic engines have brought to the image. It was an interesting hypothesis, which was just not bold enough to go all the way. The bane of the problem being insistence on maintaining our nostalgic affinity with the photographic trace within the image, at the hands of the horizontality of the new storing configurations, like those involving data bases, which tend to scramble the figures present.

Since then my assessment has been turned around. I no longer view the object as just a game of constant re-juxtaposition; it has become play on mutation, with image-growth sprouting from just about any appendage of the “Thing”. It is just possible that old traces still linger in that image, now however, they play a completely different role and feed the beast with different fodder. In this novel image, from now on, I can see a form of “monstrousness” germinating within the image, and getting right down to the entrails of the GPU itself, coming up to the pixelized surface of the screen for only a brief moment of display.

By accepting the monster in the image our approach to it becomes transformed, thus transforming that which we understand as figure, mimesis and finally narration. It also changes fields of inquiry which sanction and capture phenomena more securely and which I consider as being the most relevant for these transformations, starting with video games.

I’ll be in Iceland starting tomorrow (cool!), and all through the weekend for the Pikslaverk festival which is part of the Pixelache network. I’ll be presenting the abstractmachine.vb7d8 on Saturday and apparently also talking about the usual (code&art) on Sunday.

Ok, fire up all your Iceland-is-bankrupt jokes and post the best ones in the comments: so far, anyone I tell I’m leaving for Iceland comes up with some lame bankruptcy joke that isn’t even funny. Apparently the mere fact that Iceland went bankrupt is funny. I don’t get the joke, but maybe that’s the nature of this crisis: even the bankruptcy jokes fail? Someone sould collect them all somewhere and do something with them, just as a reminder that jokes should generally be funny. So if anyone wants to give me some good ones…

Here’s something I grabbed from the Lorna/Pikslaverk website:

“The Pikslaverk 2008 conference is the Icelandic component in the international network of Pixelache conferences. It is organized by Lorna (the Icelandic organization for electronic arts) in collaboration with The Icelandic Academy of the Arts and The Reykjavik Municipal Art Galleries. Through a series of lectures, presentations and performances, this year’s conference will continue Helsinki’s theme on education and act as a precursor to Bergen’s them on Free, Libre and Open Source Software by focussing on artists’ use of computer programming code to create works of art. Invited and selected guests will present a variety of views regarding issues relating to artistic applications of computer programming code.“

The students have organized an exhibition to kick-start the year and asked me if I could add anything. Since I’ve been working on a series of tempermental clocks over the past two weeks on all sorts of platforms (iPhone, embedded, clock, watch, computer, etc), I figured I could throw one in for their exhbition. I’ll try to get some pictures and post them here, but basically this one is a clock that hides the time whenever it detects someone looking at it.

Yet another workshop next week. This time I’ll be returning to the Institut d’arts visuels, a design school in Orléans, to kick-start a year-long project with a group of their students involving algorithmic objects. I’ll also be giving a conference on Wednesday, but I haven’t figured out the title yet, so I’ll post that at a later date.

Here is the official description of the project, written by Caroline :

• Atelier de recherche et de création
• Objets interactifs : interfaces physiques et design algorithmique

L’arc se propose de réfléchir aux problèmatiques en jeu dans la physicalisation des nouvelles interfaces et d’explorer l’interactivité lorsqu’elle se déploie dans l’espace ou au coeur d’un objet (installations interactives, objets communicants, scénographie interactive…).

Du palais de Tokyo au distributeurs de jeux vidéo, de nos lieux intimes aux espaces publics, une nouvelle génération d’oeuvres, d’espaces et d’objets apparaissent dans notre quotidien. Qu’ils soient vecteurs d’une expérience originale, d’information, ou tout simplement dotés de nouvelles fonctions, leur spécificié réside dans leur capacité à réagir. Ils sont dotés de comportements. Ils réagissent à nous, mais aussi entre eux, communiquent, parfois.

Qu’il s’agisse de la console Wii, d’une oeuvre d’electronic shadow, ou des véhicules de dernière génération, le point commun de tous ces “objets” est qu’ils embarquent un microprocesseur, de meme nature que celui nos ordinateurs. Cette infiltration de l’informatique dans les autres champs de l’industrie, de l’art, du design, car il s’agit bien de cela, permet de donner aux espaces, aux objets, aux oeuvres cette capacité à réagir, interagir, avec le spectateur, l’utilisateur, l’environnement.

Comment penser, concevoir ces objets interactifs, objets machines, et surtout leurs interfaces, c’est à dire les moyens par lesquelles ils “communiqueront” avec nous, avec le monde, entre eux. Ou s’arrete le design, ou commence la communication? ou plutot comment les deux chanmps doivent se rencontrer pour élaborer d’autres facons de réfléchir, de nouvelles méthodologies de conception pour élaborer ces objets algorythmiques? C’est ce que nous nous proposons d’explorer dans ce nouvel arc.

Jacques Francois Marchandise président de la FING, prédit que la prochaine révolution de l’internet, sera l’interconnexion par le réseau des objets. Dans peu de temps le nombre d’adresses IP (identifiant unique de chaque machine connectée au réseau) attribuées à des objets du quotien explosera et dépassera de loin le nombre de celles attribuées à des ordinateurs personnels. Nous ne pouvons faire l’économie d’une exploration des enjeux qu’implique ce constat dans nos métiers et surtout dans le métier de demain de nos étudiants.

Notre arc s’inscrit donc à la fois dans le design et dans la communication car élaborer des interphaces physiques c’est à la fois l’un et ‘autre.

Nous envisageons de travailler avec un partenaire (musée, institution culturelle) et mettre en place un moment de mise en situation et de présentation publique des projets.

As it turns out, the final strategy turned out to be: just ignore the C++ part, and teach people what they need to know in order to work on their projects. From there, what they need to know can be learned from within the project. As always for us, the pragmatic on-the-job-training method always works best.

If you speak/understand French, or trust robot translators, you can check out the on-line classes I prepared for this class: OpenFrameworks, cours en ligne. So far, there are only four basic classes, but these should be enough to get you started, especially if you’ve already walked through the classes on Processing. We purposefully jumped straight from configuring the environment to building classes, vectors, and using pointers, since these are basically all the important concepts you need to know to get started in real-life projects.

Over at the Happy Code Farm you’ll also find some OpenFrameworks examples/experiments from students, as well a contribution from two researchers from the Laboratoire ERASME who came to follow the workshop. They were great and helped us figure out a couple of configuration issues with Code::Blocks in Linux. Since everything begins in the Atelier with Pong, they created an OSC-Pong in order to figure out how to work with several machines at once. They have done a lot of work with interactive video walls, multi-touch interfaces, networked museum spaces, etc, and so they needed to know how OpenFrameworks could plug into their other interfaces/spaces which often communicate via OSC.

Once you’ve gotten through these classes and examples, there are further links listed in the introduction to very-good-things® such as the OpenFrameworks wiki or the OpenFramworks forum where you’ll find the rest of what you need.

As I mentioned last week, starting tomorrow I will be teaching a week-long intensive introduction to OpenFrameworks and C++ programming for artists and creative types. If you’re motivated and want to join in, let me know. Unfortunately, my blog has been down all week and I only figured out how to fix it today (Sunday), so this call for stragglers will probably be too late. But if you’re already in the south of France, we still have some room for what I called last week « des piques-assiette ». Just come with a laptop and we’ll set you up with 220V, wifi and ‘da knowledge.

As in last week, classes are en français, and we can’t make any travel accomodations. Also, this is an advanced class, so I’m going to figure that you’re already knowlegable in classes and lists. If you want to prepare, you should basically know how to program classes/objects in Processing/Java but you do not need to know C++ already. I’ll set you up with that. You should also understand how 3D works, pushMatrix() and popMatrix(), although I will of course go over all these concepts on Monday. (Si vous vous sentez perdu, vous trouverez une brève introduction sur ces concepts dans mes cours sur Processing). I’ve also started a class on using OpenFrameworks but I’m only at the introduction for now.

I was one of the early-draft readers of this book, and was immediately struck by its tone: Daniel is obviously a teacher and clearly has some experience teaching programming to people who normally wouldn’t be inclined to program: creative types. The book starts right off with getting to work inside the environment and keeping it simple. I also think that Casey Reas‘ book is very good in this respect, as opposed to Ira Greenberg’s book which takes a little while before getting started. Now, there are some dangers to this approach, and Shiffman’s book also feels a bit too much like you’re following a fairly standard linear trade course: learn A, then B, then C, … That’s okay because the goal is to teach you everything-you-need-to-know and to keep you on track. But while it starts off quickly and gets right into the heart of things on page 1, it can get a little dull after a while because of that same linear structure. It is not as devoted as Greenberg’s book, for example, on exploring the visual possibilities of the software, although there is — of course — some of that. Also, the design of the book is a little ugly — Daniel, your book has the design of a “Java Programming” manual!. This is compared to Reas’ book which has a nice encyclopedic feel to it (it should be clear by now that I like horizontal texts) and allows for some jumping around. So this is really a classroom book, if anything, or at least reads like one, for a standard american-style course on Interaction Design.

There is one little detail that I absolutely love, and insisted he keep in the book despite some hestiation, precisely because it’s so unabashedly dopey: Zoog, Daniel’s Processing equivalent for the infamous “Hello World!”.

Zoog is totally lame, and totally cool. I love Zoog. I want a t-shirt.

I would definitely recommend it for a question I am asked quite often: teachers often write to me and ask what book they should read in order to prepare for a class on programming. If you’re teaching Processing, this is a good one to read from A-Z. If you know everything in there, as well as in the online supplements (I even think these should have been included in the book, cf. Learning Processing Tutorials), you pretty much have all the answers your students will undoubtedly throw at you in class. Again, this is obviously written by someone who has some classroom experience making real-world interactive installations and prototypes.

For my part, I’m still waiting for that crazy off the wall book of a totally different ilk made for what I think is Processing’s strength: its compactness and simplicity. So I guess I’ll just have to write that one myself (more on that later). Also, we really need an Arduino book now. Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe is great, but is not as good of a learn-the-basics book as any of the three main Processing books which are all three of them excellent for getting you started.

Starting monday of next week I will be shifting gears a bit and concentrating an entire week to getting the students up to speed on Processing with all the basics they will need to know in order work in the Atelier Hypermédia throughout the rest of the year. This basics class will be followed by an advanced class the following week on OpenFrameworks. If you’re motivated and want to join in, let me know.

The difference this year is that we are returning to a formula we had somewhat abandoned at the school concerning technical introductions: cram all the basics into one intense week, hence freeing up the rest of the year for workshops, experimentation, research, theoretical exploration and individual projects. We used to run the school following this formula in the good-old-days®™ and it was a blast. I hope we can find some of that fun, anarchic energy this time around.

This also allows students from outside of the school and general idlers, hangers-on, or what we here in France call “pique-assiettes” to follow the training as well, since they can usually spare a week or two from their home institutions. We had originally planned to have quite a few students and even professionals (designers, artists, whatever) participating this year — I so didn’t place out a call out of fear that too many would come, as in the past — but so far only a few have made themselves heard. There is no waiting list, but I do appreciate getting an email beforehand letting me know if and why you attend to crash the party. There are no fees or requirements for loafers, but we do ask you to bring a laptop.

Classes are in French, oui, tout sera en français, and we can’t make any travel accomodations at this late date. Sorry. If you want to prepare, there are some on-line classes on Processing that you can follow here: Processing - cours en-ligne.

Some background. The French have always prided themselves — theoretically at least — on making the effort to defend artistic integrity on the economic world stage, or at least in the case of cinema which included battling the forces of globalization in order to create a « cultural exception » where smaller, culturally important works of art may exist. Again, this is the theory. But an interesting theory nevertheless, because it was understood — thanks to the French appreciation of cinema as a medium, and a medium highly dependant on significant economic forces –, that art forms such as cinema required a mixed form of economy and cultural politics in order for the art form to survive as precisely that, a form of art, and not just a form of entertainment. A complex system was put into place in order to foster that delicate balance that would allow works of cinematic art to emerge — works that without this subtle balance would never be possible in a purely economic logic of the bottom-line. Similar efforts were made in other mediums such as dance, theatre, and music, which as well (and in contradistinction with the visual arts) allowed again for mixed economies and therefore a certain degree of political influence in promoting more diverse forms of expression than purely market-driven economies would have allowed. And beyond the theory, it must be said that some of these efforts have lead, indeed, to forms of expression that would have a far more difficult existence elsewhere.

Fast forward now to the current stage, where the logic of horizontal networks has disrupted not only forms of distribution, but has lead to the emergence of new forms of creation as well. Here again, one would expect that the French — the country of the Minitel — would lead the charge for a new form of mixed economics, in which new forms of distribution would evolve along with the new forms of expression, and in which the State would offer (gasp!) legal and political refuge for artistic expressions attempting to engage these new complex territories — all with the same political will shown previously for, for example, the 20th Century’s recorded arts. Unfortunately, well-fought political alliances are hard to break when their time has come, and the bling bling of cinema has given the French not only a certainly artistic prestige on the world stage (at least as they themselves see it), but also an easy political walk down the Cannes promenade. Everyone loves cinéma in France, and therefore when a politician speaks, they too speak in defense of cinéma as a form of art and not merely of form of entertainment. Subsequently, the political alliance between the audiovisual old guard of cinema, music, and (who else?) television with the french political machine has fallen consistantly on the wrong side of artistic expression when it comes to the emerging forms currently coalescing via the Internet, because these new forms without mistake question many of the comforts enjoyed by the old. And so this alliance has constructed an artificial dichotomy that they are trying to pass as the latest meme of resistance : « création » is under attack from thieves and pirates, and who better to protect the valiant artist, than the State.

The important thing to understand here is that the Internet is being construed, and will therefore be legislated as, nothing but a new form of artistic distribution, irrespective of its capacities as a new locus for artistic creation. This is where the cinéastes have totally lost touch, and despite their claims to the contrary, are nothing but a dying guild defending its territory along with its economic model that has become, to quote their own expression, « obsolescent ».

The problem is that the State is attempting to legislate an issue that would better be served through political action. Cinéma is where it is today not through punative political legislation, but through affirmative political action. And to the contrary: cinéma is not yet dead, and in fact, who the hell said that video-on-the-demand = the Internet? That sounds an awful lot like centralized media in a new form to me. No, I’m not talking here only about VOD — that latest definition, according to the Ministry of Culture, of the cutting edge of the Internet. If cinéma is render itself compatible, it is — yes — going to have to define its relationship to the mashup, to aggregation, to search/index/recontextualisation; in other words, to all the denaturalizing tendencies the new media forms have with respect to the sacrosanct purity of recorded media’s integrity-as-an-untouchable-whole. To use a French expression, cinéma is going to have to stop acting like a Sainte ni touche (I’ll let you look it up). Music’s almost there. Television — thanks to YouTube — is going to be there faster than everyone else. And yes, cinéma will survive the mashup, and yes people will still watch films in their longer, old-skool format and love it. So we still have time to adapt artistically and economically to not only new models of distribution but new models of création and cultural appropriation, and to do so with some political flair. To legislate at this moment is to set into stone an old economic model that is already artistically showing its wear and tear.

Meanwhile, attempts (laudable and laughable) are occasionally made by various institutions (Right/Left, private/public) to fund new forms of emergent media, and find some new solutions to these problems in the current explosion of new media forms. Hey, there’s an idea: let’s see what new media itself can discover in these new forms. But the sheer scale of the discrepancies in funding between the old forms and the new can only be described at best as patronizing, and whatever the case a clear sign about which artistic mediums hold the most power in the upper echelons of power in a country where culture and public financing are intimately tied to one another. As if to make the point all the more clear, at the begining of this year a whole slew of non-profit associations working in new media saw their budgets simply axed. And while I didn’t shed a tear for their loss, given that I had always been skeptical of the relevance of the old funding model, we are still waiting for that more coherent plan of new media funding that we were promised in its place.

There are of course exceptions, but they are significant in their rarity. An inspired moment in the previous debates over digital rights, led to a short-lived vote in favour of a sort of subscription/royalty model for remunerating peer-to-peer shared works (this was quickly rescinded by the government, despite its passing the vote). I don’t know what I think about this idea, but it certainly was worth entertaining. And there was a brief moment in last year’s presidential elections when one candidate fell strongly on the side of free software, the creative commons, and so on. But we also know that — for many reasons, some of which were her own — she lost. And we also know that her opponent was profoundly opposed to any such ideas, and instead arguing for the « protection » of « artists » (uh, more like protecting labels) and their works. So we knew this battle was coming, and that given time the new government would come around to fullfilling its promise.

The fault for our current situation lies of course with the artists and cultural institutions who, unlike the previous generations, have yet to mobilize and stir up enough shit to get some respect, and reframe the debate into something more constructive. But it still does not excuse the current slate of « artistes » who are pounding yet another nail on to their own coffin by designating as their enemy the « Imperialism without limits of the Net », and seeking refuge yet again under the skirt of the State. To mistake the cultural transformations wrought via the Internet with the economic powers of globalization, is to conflate the power nexus of mass media conglomerates (the old battle) with the very public these artistes claim as their raison d’être. Artists looking for legal protections against their very own public as it binges voraciously with every click on their creations? Attempting to create a State lockdown of obscure unknown and inaccessable works, finally unearthed by the adoring hordes (the new battle), previously known as “fans”? Le monde à l’envers, indeed.

Anyway, I write about all this because my friend and colleague Anne Roquigny wrote to me in August to inform me of a new petition being formed by new media artists wishing to take a position against this artificial dichotomy pitting new against old. Their petition has apparently just gone on line today. While I gave her my full support, I decided against signing yet another petition and instead offered some analysis similar to what I’ve argued here. But their movement is nevertheless significant in that we have yet to hear from the new guard of artists in this debate, and if you want to learn more about their positions, you can start here: internetmonamour.

Now, with all that said, there is a future battle of digital (copy)rights that I find far more interesting than the present battle, net.artists or otherwise. Anyone who’s listened to me rant before should see this one coming. After music, after cinema, we will most definitely have the next battle of DRM on the doorsteps of electronic gaming, as well as in other (future) forms of expression that will require algorithmic means not only for their dissemination, but for engagement with the work itself.

A lot of this still has to do with the means. Music was the first to give in, because the files were so easy to distribute. Now cinema is in sights, with Blue Ray merely slowing down its inevitable transformation into something else (who knows?). But gaming has survived still to this day with an amazingly archaic distribution model (little pieces of plastic discs, distributed in bulk) which even as it moves to an all electronic distribution (Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, Wiiware, iPhone App Store) will nevertheless survive far beyond this shift for one simple reason: platform incompatibility and the failure (for now) of the open-source movement to create a common standard (the equivalence of 24-frames-per-second) for algorithmically constructed audiovisual forms. Gaming is software, but it sure still feels like hardware. Platform wars, just like the Mac vs. PC wars, have so far made it difficult to abstract the content from its material conditions. Think of how Microsoft leverages Word, or ties Internet Explorer to Windows. This is software, but you’d never know it by the way its used in the real-world. Emulators of classic gaming platforms have given us somewhat of a glimpse of what a future beyond this pseudo-material tie-in world might look like, but not so the current emerging patch of games which are currently pushing the new platforms to their material limits, and perfectly in tune with the console cycles. The irony is this is an artistic medium profoundly appropriate to the new distribution means. So it will be very interesting to see how this evolves, not only in terms of pure distribution, but how new network forms modify the very nature of what is considered (playing) a game.

To move this argument back now to politics: this would seem an obvious battleground for the defense of new complex economics in the defense of more creative, experimental — i.e. artistically rich — forms of gaming, much as France did for cinéma. It’s a clear win-win for both the politicians, and the “créateurs”. But so far, France, and Europe for that matter, has yet to step up to the plate, despite the occasional political declaration that France will offer the gaming industry similar advantages and protections offered the cinéma industry — as soon, of course, as it figures out what the hell “artistic merit” means in the case of gaming. And there’s the rub, for politically, even critically, no one of any credibility has yet to define what an — ok, let’s go for it — “auteur” form of gaming might represent. And that’s actually a good thing (for the moment), because in the last round of debates on this issue, industry hacks were trying to appropriate the debate, arguing in favor of the “artistic merit” of racing simulators — i.e. because the cars were designed so “artistically” (= they’re damn pretty, right?). Even Miyamoto, who many here consider a genius, is still not the auteur-gaming Europeans would expect from the term. So there’s a lot of good cultural push-back from the cultural sector on this issue. But there are obvious examples out there — the whole Independant Gaming movement is a clear place to start –, only so far no one with any political credibility has stepped up to the plate, and I suspect that the gaming industry will be the last to pitch in on the effort, given that they currently run their production houses quite comfortably as if they were (merely) an industry, and the “product” were (merely) entertainment. But it’s also part of their cultural disconnect, why they are culturally irrelevant, and why Nintendo will continue to eat their lunch.

Since this is now a blog eat blog world, and I have been taking advantage these past few years of the platform that blogging offers me, I believe that I have at least some responsibility in taking seriously the many comments, especially from those within the gaming community, and obviously over at Kotaku where the response was the most varied and interesting. So here is an attempt at some context, for what its worth…

• “We do know, however, that the 8-bit tower jumpers and the negative score applied to each WTC tower to indicate damage aren’t going to sit well with, we’re thinking, everyone we know who doesn’t hate freedom.” - Michael McWhertor

Sadly, the work has been discussed, largely (but with some exceptions) based on this early report in which the journalist did not even play the game. For me at least, a video game is at some point always going to be about its gameplay. Ironically, the same journalist finally did play the game, and found some merit in it. But by then, the cat was out of the bag, and we had a media circus on our hands — at which point I simply shut the piece off, and turned off ongoing discussions with the many news outlets that wanted not to discuss the piece, but instead my reaction to the reaction, which again is not really my role. News cycles thankfully are short, and it is my impression that with Leipzig now over, we can all calm down a little and those interested can try again to discuss the game itself. But from the point I was attributed as “hating freedom” (on what merits, please?), the whole thing was basically Game Over as far as I’m concerned, and confirmed my original concern that a commercial games convention might not a viable venue for work of this sort. Somewhere in there, I naively figured that gamers, given all the controversies they have weathered over all these years, would have the sophistication to see in the gameplay itself something else than a simple black vs. white, for vs. against, you are with me vs. you are against me posture, or “message”. There is no real “message” in GTA, and hopefully there is no real “message” in my work, and certainly not that I hate freedom. I continue to believe that the game offers something far different than hatred in fact, and personally I always felt a certain sense of release at the end of each wave, just as in the original game. Just as I felt some very mixed emotions, difficult to neatly organize into “pro” or “contra”, when the whole “War on Terror” kicked in. Sure, there is something definitely ambiguous about defending the towers in a game, and some complex emotions that, indeed, might be a little too raw, or odd, for some, even in an 8-bit representation that is highly stylized and presents itself immediately as such. But whatever one decides in the end, I have heard many a cry within the gaming world that we need to take into account the internal logic of games, and that means actually understanding the mechanics of its gameplay, and respecting its figurative tropes. In this regard, it really surprised me that Kotaku would be the first ones to fall into this trap. I can understand in the case of Fox News and NY Daily News, but Kotaku?

• In his interactive large installation, the players must prevent the catastrophe by controlling the well- known cannon at the lower screen border with their bodies and firing it using arm movements. Like the original, this trial is ultimately unsuccessful, thus creating an articulated and critical commentary about the current war strategy.” Press Release, Computerspiele Museum

This was the press release, made by the organizers of the exhibit, and never a direct quote by me. I should also point out that neither I, nor the organizers, claimed that this piece was “anti anything”. The curator who commissioned this piece called it a “critical commentary”. This is not really the way I would have phrased it, since I don’t believe art is in any way equivalent to commentary, but I don’t see any real problem in his statement either. I was perfectly fine with it, and as I said before “I approved this message”. But I think it important that we understand that the role of “critical” work is not to provide a specific message “against” anything, and I know for a fact that the organizers of the exhibition and I are on the same wavelength on this issue. “Critical”, is often used expediently to describe disapproval, but it is more effective when considered a form of discernment, distancing, or scrutinization. This should be sufficient to explain our willingness to defend the irony and ambiguity of the piece, and should have been an obvious flag that this was not a flippant piece merely seeking to shock. The events of September 11th were in many ways complex, and as I have stated before, a complex, i.e. the site of unprocessed events. This is perhaps the true meaning of the event, and why people are so upset over my rehashing it: perhaps September 11th is entirely un-processable, and that we wish it to remain so. This too is a valid point, and I have noted it.

• “[H]e made the original in 2001. What fucking point was there there? There was none. This guy is a jack-ass. There was no “War on Terror” when he made this piece of shit. He was just trying piss people off. And now he’s coming back and spouting off illogical bullshit that Art Aficionados and Critics will try to defend by creating a message that was never there.” - Ad-hominem at 01:50 PM on 08/20/08

It is absolutely true that there was no “War on Terror” when I originally made this piece. It is also true that this was a very different piece back then. In fact, on September 10th I was simply working on a mod that upon waking up the following day had taken on an eerily new significance. The whole connection happened almost as an accident.

On the first day of the exhibit, I made the following statement to AP: “I originally produced the work for my own needs, as a personal attempt to unravel what had become an ontological knot due to the many symbolic layers that had mixed themselves in with an extremely violent act.” I’m sure I’ve pissed off a people right there with my rhetoric, but I really do mean it quite literally: I had no idea at the time what to make of the whole damn thing, hence the ontological knot. To put it in a manner of speech for those in the forums: I just kept saying to myself what the f@#$ was that!?. On the one hand we had innocent citizens perishing in an extreme violence heretofore unseen in such a public form of witness, and yet the entire thing felt precisely choreographed for us, almost — gulp — sophisticated in its use of our media as a form of warfare. They was frikkin’ with us Americans on multiple levels, and using our own language to boot. They had obviously been watching our movies, and playing our games. At which point I started to realize (and I was not alone in this) that Al Qaeda had somehow tapped, quite intimately, into our collective projections of fear and destruction, and had invoked an often rehearsed metaphor of invaders descending from the sky. Twisted, indeed.

Since then, this whole event has evolved over time, as has this piece, as the cultural discourse on the World Trade attacks shifted. We have seen many different cycles in this process, and many attempts to re-appropriate the symbols and language used to describe the event itself. Meanwhile, we as Americans have resorted to tying ourselves ever tighter to the icon of the terrorist’s explosive-laden belt. At the symbolic level of political theater, it is as if we have decided that in order to give truth to our military resolve, we somehow had to integrate the figure of the terrorist as our figurehead. A strange emblem, indeed.

For my part, I have lived through a very different experience of a city under siege by terrorists, held hostage by random acts of extreme violence that paralyzed us for months, and yes there was gruesome dismemberment and death involved. I am sure those wishing my death will regret to learn that I and members of my family were to have been precisely at the time and location where one of the dismantled bombs was set to go off. It was a sickening prospect, as it was precisely designed to kill and maim children. So I get you, when you tell me that terrorists aren’t f@$#ing around, and that this still is the real deal. I know this very well to be true. And sure, the New York and Washington attacks had no comparison to those that I lived through and give me no understanding of the suffering of those who perished. But it does give me some perspective. And I remember a very different response, and a very different form of military and political resolve. Above all, and this is the point, I remember a very different use of political iconography. These are all choices we make collectively, and it takes place as much on the physical and political battlefield, as it does in the media war. Video games, as many have pointed out, have not been neutral on this front.

But, as you have correctly reminded us — and thank you for looking –, despite all this posturing this was obviously not what the piece was originally about. To suggest otherwise would be absurd. For Leipzig I was simply trying to return to that moment, thick as it is now with the veneer of the current war strategy plastered over it. I still remember a very disturbing emotion, at once very raw, and yet immediately mediated. Against all of the bazillions of quotations that all of us have placed around it, I was attempting to tap back into that instant, and revisit it. Perhaps my choice of a quote here and an icon there suggested a too-obvious form of caricature that has attached itself to this event. Perhaps the idea itself is purely tasteless. Perhaps. Meanwhile, as I switch the channels on my american TV set, commercials bombard me with “World Trade Center Commemorative Coins!” in yet another attempt to bury this moment in insignificance. So, if people out there feel I was trivializing the event in giving it the form I did, I can accept that, and I’m certainly willing to hear their arguments — quite numerous at last count in the various forums. But consider our current context nonetheless.

• “Art. Because the word “pretentious” is just far too long.” - ArcaneDevice at 02:47 PM on 08/23/08

That’s pretty damn funny.

• “So its means that we should fight against terrorism with more than “one cannon”, and that in order to defeat evil/invaders, we must fight it with more force and in multiple ways. I just think you went about it with a poor choice, and at least you tried something.” - ADAM!!! - 25 August, 2008 @ 01:15 am
• “Personally, I quite liked the futility of the game and that you can’t ever win against the “invaders” - very apt.” - Kazzahdrane - 21 August, 2008 @ 04:06 am

The way in which the game play was designed, it is actually possible to endlessly “beat” the game by simply getting enough people to shoot at it with their arms, feet, head, whatever. The Invaders! will of course never give up, but that was also the power of coin-operated games. The “Game Over” screen is an integral part of its narrative arc; one can nevertheless delay that arrival, finding different strategies of keeping it at bay, and that was always the emotional power of this form of gaming.

When Andreas Lange asked me to make the piece multiplayer, one of the first things that I tried to do was to find a balance between playing the game by yourself, and playing it with others. I spent quite a lot of time on this aspect, and ran several different simulations on the frequency required to actually keep the game playing, eternally. In one simulation, the piece had ran over a week, and had an astronomical score. I even changed the bit-width of certain variables, just to make sure that scores could grow big enough. This possibility was programmed-in, if you will, as an extreme possibility, and I was quite hoping to see someone attempt it in Leipzig. Now, since you have to actually move your body with a certain velocity to actually shoot, this will obviously tire you out. But it does not preclude using others to take over while you recuperate, or even mounting some sort of mechanical device in front of the camera and just let the thing play on autopilot. There’s always a way to trick the machine. You can shoot the way I suggested in the instructions, and then there’s how people will actually do it. I’ve seen videos on the web of a fellow that pretty much figured out the necessary velocity to trick the camera into giving him multiple shots (he also looked pretty silly doing it, but at least he got a high score). But my point is that there were some creative strategies to be found there, and I figured that some ingenious soul (American or otherwise) might find their own trick. Who knows how long people could have kept up the fight?

• “1. This guy doesn’t believe video games are capable of being art. He outright said this. 2. He created it September 12th, 2001, not just recently. 3. He himself has changed what he claims the meaning of the artwork is a number of times. He has called it (Himself, mind you) a) A study in Mathematics B) A game in which the common man can fight back against the invaders C) A weak, meaningless piece of work that has been diluted by the Iraq War and D) A commentary on the current warfare plan.” - Ad-hominem at 09:56 PM on 08/22/08

I’ll leave the mathematics part for another debate (I was probably talking about algorithms, but I might be wrong, feel free to send me the quote). But I have definitely said in the past that video games are not de facto Art, which probably — in most discussions — refers to the “fine arts”. It is definitely an “art form”, but I have always said that the whole “games as art” debate is less about art, and what-is-art (yawn, boring!), than about art institutions and therefore respectability. Art institutions have long, complex histories and ideologies, and I’m not sure video games want to be a part of some of these institutions anyway. But they are definitely of a different ilk in their current form, and I also think that video games, the industry, and its most ardent proponents, still have a lot to learn on this front. There is definitely a tendency towards a fairly myopic vision of gaming and its reach, and yes this includes the core gamer crowd. There is a whole world out there of critical gaming, art games, call-it-what-you-will that I suspect many people out there have never heard of.

Oh, and if people think that by creating a minor scandal in a commercial game faire I am somehow moving myself up the art ladder, they clearly have no idea how that world ticks.

• “Yah, this has obviously become more about the artist and the WTC than Space Invaders. Way to steal the thunder from the game itself, jerk.” - art_zombie at 01:45 PM on 08/20/08

Yes, that might indeed be true. But I’ve always signed my work as a form of responsibility — unlike, by the way, some of those making threats not only against me, but against members of my family. If that makes me a “douche bag” who deliberately offends so many people and then tries to pass it off as “art”, so be it. I don’t see the artistic merit in merely offending people, but then again, I think your point is that this work was not really all that successful as a piece of art. And that too, might be true. I would like to mention again, that I think it is a shame that this debate is not discussing the gameplay, or at least starting from that point, instead of vague first impressions concerning the work, riddled as they were with very specific incendiary rhetoric, almost designed for a headline on Fox News. But back to your point, I happen to think that the work was not in any way an insult to Space Invaders, a brilliant game that has taken on its own mythological status, and that in fact my take on it is really something else altogether, and that most people get this, or should. Space Invaders is, in fact, like many Japanese games, a very innocent affair, and joyously so. One fights with no clear political context, and it is as ethically ambiguous as cleaning your bathroom of mold, or shooing away ants while you picnic. So when I allude to certain aspects of that game, I am very obviously reading it on a whole other level. I am, of course, reading history backwards, as if that wasn’t already obvious. If somehow someone confuses this with the original game itself, or its makers, it is unfortunate, and I am indeed very sorry for that.

• “I have an idea for a piece of performance art you might be interested in, it involves me shoving the Eiffel Tower up your ass until you choke on your damn colon and begin to vomit your own lungs.” - Sus - 21 August, 2008 @ 04:06 am

I’ve never been all that big on performance art myself. But if you wanted to make a game of that, I’d definitely want to play it.

Update (27/08): Ok, so it appears that most of the debate has finally turned into something more constructive, even if I still feel that the whole thing is quite overblown and not worthy of our time. However, there remains one final complaint that I find quite valid, and indeed cause for confusion, and that is concerning why I actually took the piece down. I tried to adress this in my original statement, but given the numerous demands for comment, apparently more context is needed there too. Here is more or less what I said to a journalist last night:

The reasons for pulling the work are numerous and complex. There was above all the whole tone of the media circus which I have already commented at length, and of course I had placed the organizers of the Games Convention in something of a bind due to the fact that Taito is one of their clients. On the legal front, we discussed the matter briefly and came to the conclusion that any claims of infringement were untenable, and that it was important to defend a work of art in principle. But unfortunately, other concerns had in the meantime raised their heads, thanks (in part, but not entirely) to the various threats on me (whatever) and my family (wtf!?) — in other words that modern form of the witch-hunt, a favourite sport of our times. It was at this point that I made my decision, which obviously places serious doubts on my credibility (no big deal, I’ll survive), but at least had the advantage of slowing somewhat the momentum of the most extreme elements. For all of these reasons, and others too involved to get into here, I again take full responsibility for the decision to take down the work.

Obviously people will have their own take on all this, and I invite you to think whatever you will.

Last update 01/09/2008 (see below). See also my attempt at context.

Update (24/08) : If you haven’t heard, this piece has stirred quite a controvery. I’m keeping the comments open for people to opine in their own manner and leisure. If you are interested, there is also significant debate here and at many other sites commenting on the affair. I obviously have a lot of things to say, and while I’m tempted to try and correct some of the most exaggerated misconceptions, as many commentators have mentioned the damage has already been done, the responsibility is ultimately mine, and it is therefore up to others now to make up their own minds.

Next week, my old piece from September 2001 will yet again be recycled, only this time in a very large scale edition, with some significant updates, all in celebration of 30 years of Invaders falling from the skies. Invaders! will this time be a multiplayer affair, with improved tracking (optical flow, yada yada yada…), a high (and low) scores leader board, and a stronger tie-in to the historical narrative that originally inspired me to make this version in the first place.

For an idea of how the physical interaction works, check out this video from the Laboral Gameworld exhibition in 2007.

This is all taking place at the huge Games Convention taking place every year in Leipzig. This year Andreas Lange of the Computer Spiele Museum was nice enough to include me in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders with my somewhat ambiguous juxtaposition of this mythical game and the historical events of September 11th. He has also included a selection of various artefacts of the “official” Space Invaders game which will accompagny my large-scale full-body form of engagement.

Here is the press release (read : not written by me), which for once gets it pretty much right :

Space Invaders is one of the biggest video game legends. When the game landed in arcades world-wide in 1978, it initiated a previously unknown boom. Shortly after the appearance of the blockbuster pictures “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the “Third Kind”, thanks to Space Invaders, millions of mostly young players could step in to save the world from the alien invaders with their joystick in hand.

Space Invaders became a legend and a global icon. It is a frequently quoted art motif and remains omnipresent in our daily life. It is still as fresh as ever. The exhibition “Space Invaders: Die Jubiläumsshow!” (Space Invaders: the Anniversary Show) would like to pay homage to this evergreen and create an experience from its historical and current facets.

In addition to a comprehensive documentation, an original Space Invaders machine naturally forms the centre of attraction. Everything is overshadowed by the interactive large installation “Invaders!” by the French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley.

The World Trade Center attacks mark a deep cut in our recent history that is still being processed. The French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley has found an unusual – though obvious – metaphor with his work “Invaders!”, which is based on the 1978 arcade original. In his interactive large installation, the players must prevent the catastrophe by controlling the well- known cannon at the lower screen border with their bodies and firing it using arm movements. Like the original, this trial is ultimately unsuccessful, thus creating an articulated and critical commentary about the current war strategy. In this regard, Douglas Edric Stanley sees Space Invaders as “a social tale that can be related to historical tales without losing its poetic power” (D.E. Stanley).

update (20/08): Kotaku’s had a very negative reaction to the piece, and their community seems pretty pissed off. I think there’s some confusion in there, as per usual, but you can head over to their website for more on the controversy (here and here) .

update (21/08): PC World’s Game On blog has a much more measured response to the Kotaku post. There are several other reports as well, including this slightly more accurate one from Fox News which tries to flesh out a few of the details discussed by Kotaku. NY Daily News has also apparently jumped into the fray, calling World Trade Center victims to get their response — which in my humble opinion is just as sleezy and facile as anything else I’m apparently being accused of. Ah, the slow descent of journalism into endless tautological news cycles. Count me out.

update (22/08). Here is the statement I made last night concerning the removal of Invaders! from the convention:

“After three days of a steady downward spiral in public discussion of the piece, I have just given my agreement to the organizers of the Leipzig Games Convention to simply turn off the installation Invaders! While I realize the dangerous precedent of allowing the lowest common denominator dictate what is and is not a valid form of expression, unfortunately the current tone has totally obfuscated the original aims of the piece. While I take full responsibility for the uncomfortable ambiguity of certain aspects of this work, it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy’s sake, and unfortunately, this is what the piece has now become. The American response to this work has been, frankly, immature, and lacking the sophistication and consideration that other parts of the world have so far shown the work. Contrary to previous reports, I am an American, and it saddens me that we as a people remain so profoundly unable to process this event outside of some obscure, but tacitly understood, criteria of purely anesthetized artistic representation. Due to these profound misunderstandings, I simply feel that from an artistic point of view, the work has lost the ability to have any valuable impact, poetic or otherwise. I have not been pressured by the Leipziger Messe, nor by the Computerspiele Museum in this decision — to the contrary, they have offered their support in defending the right of artists to speak freely, and in whatever context they may choose.”

update (01/09) : Some people continue to be under the impression that I created a game in which the goal is to bomb the World Trade Center. Herein lies the power of rumor, suggestion, and above all controversy. I made no such game. In Invaders!, you are very clearly defending the towers, on the side of America, and there is no option to play the role of the invaders. Any suggestion to the contrary is probably under the influence of one early report, in which the flames of the towers were the only thing that remained. This reporter did not understand that the work was interactive, and this inaccuracy was eventually corrected. If, from there, people are still offended, fine; and you are welcome to comment your objections here or on the many blogs that have been covering this story. But I found it quite telling when, yesterday, upon correcting someone poorly informed on this matter, this same person replied, “Then what is all the controversy about?” Indeed.

Download link: here

For the features, you have internal (via OpenCV) and external (via Processing) capture, basic image treatment (threshold, comparison, extraction, etc), contour tracking, face & body tracking, and a few other little goodies thrown in here and there. So, as it stands, you can (for example), recognize someone’s face, grab the outline of that face, and go into the image data of that person’s face to extract the face data. Or, you could use infrared filters with lights pointed at or placed on your body (see below), a multi-touch surface, or some other artificial lighting condition to grab light blobs for finger or body-part tracking and use that data somehow in Processing. There are obviously many possibilities.

Some of the things you cannot yet do, and which we plan to add to the library: motion history images and optical flow (pixel tracking), kalman predictions, color tracking, histograms, and obviously the list could go on and on. A lot of these functions I already have working in OpenFrameworks for an installation (soon to be announced) which will be exhibited later this summer. So consider the current release a starting point, with what we believe is a fairly clean start, but we could be wrong on that. The code is open, so go in and dig around — perhaps you can give us some good advice or add to the code yourself.

Special note: this library will also work for pure Java work, and yes, there is Java documentation.

So, why did it take so long? Well… when I say that we’ve been busy testing it in laboratory and real-world instances, I mean it. I’ve gotten some mail on this recently, so I should make things a little clearer: if you ever wondered why I don’t post as much as I (or apparently some of you) would like, it’s because I’m busy elsewhere working on so many @#&*$% projects. I do not just work on my own projects and I am definitely not a full-time blogger : I teach, run an atelier, collaborate with other artists, do research, write, write code, consult, curate, and somewhere in there, I’m a dad for two lovely and brilliant young (or youngish) women. Since I don’t have a secretary, nor a double, that means some creative Douglas-time-sharing. So when I’m quiet here, it most certainly means that I’m busy doing one of these other things. And over the past few months, that has worked out to about 50% of my creative work involving OpenCV in Processing and OpenFrameworks.

And on Stéphane’s side, he’s been just as busy working over the past six months on a gazillion projects for various artists, art students, and researchers; and only a part of that work involved this OpenCV library.

So, what have we been doing with it? The library has already been used in numerous projects at the Atelier Hypermédia, in external workshops at schools such as the Institut d’Arts Visuels in Orléans, as a research tool at the DRII laboratory (Dispositifs relationnels : Installations Interactives) at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and in two public works, one an installation for Gamerz 0.2 and the other as a component of a haptic dance performance-dispositif by Wolf Ka and his studio. Finally, we used the library to prototype an urban-design project by Lei Zhao for the Studio Lentigo, Marseille although this project was eventually finished in OpenFrameworks due to the high video performance demands of the installation. So all in all, about a dozen different projects over the past few months.

Here are a few images/videos with links for more information on the author(s)/works:

• Wolf Ka + cie, Moving By Numbers (see link for video).

• Atelier Hypermédia, C’est toi la patate.

• Lei Zhao, Node City (follow link for more videos).

• Fabien Artal, Diplôme DNSEP (avec les félicitations du jury), L’école supérieure d’Aix-en-Provence. There is a video, but you’ll have to jump to 23:15 for Fabien’s installation.

• Students of the Institut d’Arts Visuels, Workshop Légerté + Nuit des musées, Orléans (follow this link for — very poor quality — video).

• I’ll leave off with these images from an installation Stefan Schwabe created with his collaborator Sebastian Neitsch in a public pool in Halle. As swimmers wade about, their movements are tracked by a camera and modify an image built out of 4 overlapping projectors, projecting onto the dome of the rotunda. It should be mentioned that, like Lei Zhao’s Node City, this piece used Processing only during the prototyping phase (the final work was created in vvvv). Nevertheless, Stefan & Sebastian’s project was an important one in our year-long experimentation with various forms of video surveillance in art and design installations. (See Stefan’s website for video of this installation).

Update: I used the wrong terminology. Oops. We decided to call this version v01, precisely to suggest that there is still much progress to be made. Previously I called it v1.0, which is a very different idea!