abstractmachine

So I’m back in my hotel taking a quick pause before heading back to this huge exhibition, where I plan to finish filming the other installations. They apparently see things in a big way here, although I doubt how long they can keep it running at this scale. To give just one example: various persona from the digital arts community were flown in from all over the world, just to be here for the opening, instantly giving it the feel of one of those internationale festivals where you meet all the same people over and over again. And then there is the expanse of historical digital, electronic or mechanical works; it’s quite staggering, given the cost of just the equipment for such a show. At the Feedback exhibit this makes an interesting mix: Eddo Stern, Mary Flanagan, Nam June Paik, Sol LeWitt, Vera Molnar, Hans Haacke, Lygia Clark, Marcel Duchamp, Marie Sester, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Paul Sermon, Roman Verostko, JODI, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Casey Reas, Harold Cohen, Cory Archangel, Manfred Mohr, Wolfgang Staehle, David Rokeby, etc. And I’ve only mentioned half of the artists.

Then there’s our exhibit where I absolutely love Walter Langelaar’s nOtbOt, and of course the Pongmechanik, Furminator, 650 Polygon John Carmack, TFT Tennis, Darkgame, etc. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Note: I was lucky enough to take this quick snapshot of Invaders! as it passed by on the regional television, followed by the lovely Rosina Gómez-Baeza Tinturé.

P.S. I’ll write more about the coding-part later. But just for the record, I ended up writing everything in Processing from scratch with about 2 days of coding mixed with another two days of installation troubles. It uses the OSC, OpenGL, Camera, and ESS libraries for Processing. The tracking software took about two hours, and half of that was just making some little adjustments. Amazing how fast you can make a working installation on-site with Processing.

• Exhibition: Gameworld
• Location: Laboral Centro de arte, Gijon, Spain
• Dates: 30 march, 2007 – 30 June, 2007
• Curator: Carl Goodman
• Associate Curator: Daphne Dragona

• Curatorial Advisors: Chris Burke, Alexander Galloway, Henry Lowood, Julian Oliver, Helen Stuckey

• Games: Spacewar (Graetz, Russell, Wiitanen); Star Raiders (Doug Neubauer); Zork (Marc Blank & Dave Lebling); Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov); Civilization I & II (Sid Meier): Sim City (Will Wright); Super Mario 3 (Shigeru Miyamoto – Nintendo); Warcraft series (Blizzard Entertainment); Doom (ID Software); Sensible World of Soccer (John Hare – Sensible Software)

• Experimental: Flow (Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago); We Love Katamari (Keita Takahashi – Namco); Braid (Jonathan Blow et al – Number None); Border Games (El Fiambrera Obrera); Arcade Wire (Ian Bogost, Gonzalo Frasca); Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (Danny Ledone); 2nd Person Shooter (Julian Oliver); Darkgame (Eddo Stern); Once More With Feeling (Ken Perlin – NYU MRL); Facade (Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern); Invaders! (Douglas Edric Stanley); axbx (Brent Gustafson); TFT Tennis (Dirk Eijbouts); Pongmechanik (Niklas Roy); AR Tennis (Hitlab New Zealand); Furminator (Fur Collaboriative); Movie Sandbox – Animachine (Friedrich Kirschner); Domestic (Mary Flanagan); Endless Forest (Tale of Tales)

• Machinima: Sheik Attack (Eddo Stern); This Spartan Life (Chris Burke); She Puppet (Peggy Ahwesh); Avatar Portraits (Eva and Franco Mattes); 650 Polygon John Carmack (Brody Condon); FPS and WOW (Aram Bartholl); Screen Shots (John Haddock); Readyplayed (Ludic Society); LARP (Brody Condon); WOW and Need for Speed 2 Documentary (Aram Bartholl); Boys in the Hood (Axel Stockburger); Dead in Iraq (Joseph Delappe); The War Room (Joan Leandre); Notbot (Walter Langelaar); Retroyou (Joan Leandre); Space(E)scape (Workspace Unlimited); Super Mario Sleeping (Miltos Manetas); Super Mario Movie (Cory Archangel & Paperrad)

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be in Spain all week preparing for this exhibition. Although I don’t have the time, I said yes simply because it’s a pretty impressive lineup for an exhibition on classic video games, emerging games (such as the lovely Flow), critical games (ex. Darkgame), art-games, unheimlich avatars, etc. I should mention that I grabbed the above list from the Braid blog [link] and not from the Laboral website itself which has yet to publish a full list. So this list might be incorrect/incomplete. But since I saw some of the behind the scenes activity, I do know that many of those artists and/or games will be there, and I just love the list itself even if it is innacurate : Katamari Damacy? Check. Sheik Attack? Check. Furminator? Check. Pongmechanik? Check. Super Mario Movie? Check. Shigeru Miyamoto meets Mary Flanagan? Whynot!?

From my point of view (and Carl knows this already), I will be showing what I consider to be one of my weakest works — a fairly personal work from 2001 that I feel has lost its context, long since stolen by other events; in fact, events that have purposefully been designed to render it unreadable. I’m of course talking about the Iraq war, and you have to give it to Bush when it comes to appropriation: if he were an artist, he’d been an even greater thief than Picasso. But I trust Mr. Goodman’s judgement, as I appreciate his take on gaming as an emerging art form — and no, that doesn’t mean that I think video games are art; I used the word « emerging » there (sheesh, get a life).

So I’m installing a work that the public seems to enjoy, not only because everyone loves Space Invaders, but because you can play it with your body. Further proof that the future is EyeToy and the Wii.

For this exhibit, I’ll be re-working the surveillance code quite a bit, and trying to plug OpenFrameworks into the system, not only because it’s cool, but because it’s ultimately the way to go — surveillance should really be done with hardware specific compiled code, although I might start a flamewar with that comment. I’ll also be adapting the program to the space, but I’ll have to get there before I can start work on that.

I’ve also been looking at plugging in oscpack, because OpenFrameworks is too early (not even public beta) and all the planned libraries such as OSC aren’t linked up yet. But oscpack unfortunately doesn’t do the actual routing, so I might end up using MIDI instead. And if all that doesn’t work, I’ll fall back onto some other tried and true solution, i.e. Processing or (gasp) TrackThemColors.

We’re still waiting for some stragglers, but here are some of the videos we have online from the ENIAROF group on YouTube and the ENIAROF Pool on Flickr. For more information on ENIAROF, read this article by Marie Lechner (Les nouvelles lois de l’attraction, or translated into English: The New Laws of Attraction), or visit the ENIAROF Blog. Most of the electronic work you see here is the result of a two-week workshop using Processing, Arduino, and Wiring. The rest are propositions by various artists and contributors to ENIAROF, for example Dekalko Studio, M2F, or a theatre troupe/military camp from Belgium that went by the title « Cookies Koolkies ».

Here’s the official description: « ENIAROF is a unique concept for a new form of carnaval, or « fête foraine », mixing the logic of flash mobs, gore, digital arts, classic video games, mashups, karaoke, BBQ, cotton candy, and anything weirdly kaiju-esque on a foggy night that just wants to have fun. ENIAROF (0.1) descended onto Aix-en-Provence in March 2005, followed by Paris (0.1.1), Marseille (0.1.2) and Aix-en-Provence (0.2) in late 2006. »

And don’t forget: GamerZ (bad name, fun exhibit) is still going on until this Friday afternoon (19h00). Much of ENIAROF ended up spilling into that exhibit and vice-versa.

Videos from the arcade:

{1} « MadNES »; Manuel Braun, Antonin Fourneau, Stéfan Piat; built with NES + modified controller; {2+3} « Immortal Combat »; Jean-Baptiste Alfonsi, Thomas Cheneseau, Wael Koudaih; built with Processing + camera + beamer + boxing gloves; {4} « Cui Cui Cabaret »; Cui Cui; built with carboard box + electricity + amplification; {5} « Pitch-Pong »; Émilie Brout; built with Processing + ESS + microphone; {6} « Simulateur de reportage TF1 »; Florian Deloison; built with Processing + camera; {7} « Sade »; Pascal Chirol; built with Processing + Arduino + camera; {8} « Open Your Eyes »; Marjorie Brunet, Tomek Jarolim; built with Processing + microphone; {9} « La dialectique des cailloux »; Maxime Marion; built with Processing + ReacTIvision + Live + camera + beamer; {10} « Tout le monde s’appelle Marcel Marceau »; Fabien Artal; built with Processing + ReacTIvision + camera + beamer; {11} « TekkenDrum »; Raphaël Isdant; built with Processing + Arduino + drumkit; {12} « L’ours mal leché »; Liza Gabry, Caroline Delieutraz; built with Processing + Arduino + fluffy bear.

Images from the Flickr pool:

More videos to come from those two locations, but I have just a few weeks left to finish my thesis, so enough ENIAROFing for me.

I’m madly editing videos and posting them on the ENIAROF account on YouTube. When I’m finished, I’ll post them all here. Videos from the other attractions, for example from the AmaZiNg mUd wResTlInG or the Cabaret Cui Cui will be posted by other ENIAROFers on the same account. We have also started an ENIAROF Flickr pool and people have started adding their photos.

While you wait for all that wonderful media, you can amuse yourself here with the ENIAROF 0.2 Video Arcade Emulator. You can play it directly online here (link), just scroll down to « ENIAROF 0.2 Video Arcade Emulator » and click « PLAY! ». Or you can download the eniarof02.gba.zip file file here (link), for which you will need a Gameboy Emulator.

Don’t expect much. It’s quick & dirty and was built in my free time (not much) during the ENIAROF Workshop.

Source code will follow once I fix a little bug in the serial communication (for those using my uart.gba code, note that I am currently writing into the wrong serial register — I found the error, I just need some free time to fix it). I also need to make a nicer Processing client for GBA<>Processing communication.

Special thanks goes to Manuel Braun and Stéfan Piat who created all the icons and sweated over adapting them to the tile-constraints of the Gameboy.

I’ve just come back home from ENIAROF. As people say here in France, « c’était énorme » (and in fact we heard quite a few people say it on their way out). If you’re anywhere near Aix-en-Provence tomorrow, you really should drop by. 16h00 -> 23h00, and probably later into the night ;-)

It costs anywhere from 1€ to 6€, depending on the roll of the dice. And you get a special prize of course if you roll a six.

I don’t know how to blog it without sounding full of myself (what’s new, right?), but this year’s ENIAROF is just plain amazing. And FUN. The Eniarofers have really made something wonderful, and Antonin Fourneau’s concept has further proved its generative force. The « attractions » just kept piling up, one after the other into the night, each one more wonderfully absurd than the next and yet perfectly logical in-the-world-that-is-ENIAROF. In fact, we probably could have just stood back and watched the thing build itself, thanks to the DOGMeNIAROF and indeed much of the non-electronic attractions did just that. Karaoke and Mud wrestling was back, this time joined by a very peculiar form of concert: the « CuiCuiBox » where three performers rock out with the Amps set to 11 in a tiny cardboard box with just enough space for a few people to squeeze in and just enough headroom to pogo and headbang to your heart’s delight. Now, 2/3rds of CuiCui make up 1/2 of 8=8 (got that?), so of course we thought it was totally cool, but it really was. They’ll be there again tomorrow night, with the Amps set to 11 1/2. Promise…

But my favorite of all the attractions, way beyond our own (I’ll post videos and photos online of those once I’ve gotten a little sleep and had some time to film), was Makemoo’s « Brouette Tuning », which is nothing more than a tricked out wheelbarrow with a huge bass hooked up to an mp3. Ok, that’s funny, but damn if the thing doesn’t work perfectly to add that little extra punch to the evening. Party getting dull? Just add the « Brouette Tuning ». The wheelbarrows (in fact there were two – creating wonderful mashup possibilities) just naturally migrated through the carnaval and popped up wherever people need a big FUNKY boom bass to get things moving again. So easy to pick up a wicked wheelbarrow and wheel it wherever you want to get ’da party started.

For more information, and a great interview with Antonin by the always cool Marie Lechner, you can read the following article in today’s Libération/Écrans blog : « Nouvelles lois de l’attraction ». Antonin talks about classic video games, monsters, Processing + Arduinio and joyous responses to the pitiful state of digital arts festivals.

• Event: ENIAROF 0.2
• Organisation / ENIAROF: Antonin Fourneau
• Organisation / ENIAROF Video Arcade: Stéphane Cousot, Antonin Fourneau & Douglas Edric Stanley
• Video Arcade: Atelier Hypermedia, Atelier de Recherches Interactives
• Video Arcade Attractions: Jean-Baptiste Alfonsi, Fabien Artal, Timothée Baschet, Pauline Bétrancourt, Sylvain Boutroue, Emilie Brout, Marjorie Brunet, Thomas Cheneseau, Pascal Chirol, Morgane Conan, Caroline Delieutraz, Florent Deloison, Antonin Fourneau, Liza Gabry, Anthony Giroud, Raphaël Isdant, Tomek Jarolim, Wael Koudaih, Arnaud Laurens, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre, Maxim Marion, Nicolas Moncasi, Douglas Edric Stanley, Bastien Vacherand, Qian Xu
• Technical assistance: Laurent Costes & Jean-Pierre Mandon
• Location: L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• Date: 1 + 2 December, 2006
• Hours: 19h – 23h (Friday), 16h – 23h (Saturday)
• Website: ENIAROF
• Blog: blogEniarof
• Price: 1€ – 6€ (roll of dice at ticket counter)

Why no news recently about ENIAROF? Well, we are officially swamped, but happily so. I promise (really, no really) to get some more workable pictures online as soon as possible. Probably Friday afternoon, or if I want to sleep sometime during the weekend. Also the playable ENIAROF-simulator for Gameboy will appear online on Friday just in time for the event itself (playable via gamecard or emulator if you don’t have a Gameboy). Most of the code is finished, we just have to finish the credits, which is the hard part because were so busy finishing this:

…and this…

…and more! (I’m starting to sound like a user car salesman).

At the latest count there are currently 25 attractions being built during our two-week workshop in time for ENIAROF (open for business December 1st and 2nd, i.e. soon). Actually, 25 is a conservative estimate, because they keep popping up each time I turn my head. We’ve sort of gone overboard this time, but even if we are insane, it’s also normal given how quickly Processing and Arduino lets us build our prototypes. Some of the newer students are fighting with Processing a bit, but almost everyone gets Arduino immediately, especially those who probably would have dropped out from all the code.

Let’s see, what do have we so far, hmmm, « Tout le monde s’appelle Marcel Marceau » (an ingenious use of ReacTIVision), « Frite Fighter » (using Pool Floatees and live actors to remote-control play street fighter), « SADE » (with, um, this flourescent thing — and yeah, Arduino controls its motor), « Bzzzzz » (don’t ask), « La chasse » (yes, if you speak French, it means what it means), pretty little poetic things like the « Pitch-Pong » (play pong with an FFT), « MadNES » (80’s TV-set becomes the Joystick), « Tekken Drum » (play Tekken with a drumset), « Immortel Combat » (vote for your favorite politician with a boxing glove), and a BIG fluffy teddy bear that really wants to play with you (« L’ours mal leché »). There’s a lot more. For example, one that I really like (hmmm, can’t find the name) lets two players choose their game caracter solely using their thumbprint as input. The game then takes over from there and plays out the game for you (no other input required) based on your scanned biometric information. Who wins depends on whatever eugenist code it’s creator (Nicolas) has thrown into the game’s design. There’s a lot more. Better just let everyone install everything and post some decent pictures then.

We’ll only be running for two days, so we just have to pull together enough string, wire, tape and glue to make it all work.

Here are some pictures I took this afternoon of some of the non-electronic « attractions » that are already set up. There will be more. If it’s too small to see, note that these are like those signs you see at zoos, etc., where you can take a picture of your head in the mouth of a lion, etc…

This is an itsy-bitsy post. Just to let people know that Antonin Fourneau and I will be speaking tomorrow (damn! there we go again, make that today) through visioconference and various high-tech remote technologies (i.e. Ben Chang’s hand) to the students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Transatlab. We will be speaking at 17h00 Aix-en-Provence time, 10 AM Chicago time. Here’s the official announcement:

By day, the Atelier Hypermedia explores the relationship of algorithms to plasticity, and situates itself somewhere at the intersection of generative cinema, modular imagery, interactivity, robotics, simulation, physical computing, networks and play. On off-days it doubles as theoretical partner in the investigation of post-cybernetics and slow real-time systems as the research group PLOT. And by night it wanders further into unknown territories via the monster that is « ENIAROF » — a singular form of attraction for the emerging digital_kaiju culture. At exatly 48 hours before the unveiling of its latest orchestrated public accident, Douglas Edric Stanley and Antonin Fourneau will present « The-Thing-That-Was-Called-ENIAROF », along with other notable productions of the Atelier Hypermédia, though a video conference with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. November 29th, 2006. 10:00 CST / 17:00 CET.

Oh, why « Transatlab » ? Well, of course, officially we were thinking of something like this:

But in reality, it’s probably something more like this:

…and maybe even this:

Still in preparation for ENIAROF 0.2, and while we’re waiting for things to start, my collegue Ben Chang over at the Chicago Art Institute sent me to Tale of Tales’ Realtime Art Manifesto [link]. He suggested it in relation to our DOGMeNIAROF, and indeed there are many similarities. But they’ve got even better slogans: « Do not render! », « Be a dictator », « Interactivity wants to be free », and other semantically ambiguous slogans. And then there is the last one, which ties in very well with the whole ENIAROF philosophy: « Develop a punk economy ».

In fact, on this last idea is absolutely something that inspired ENIAROF. We’ve been talking quite some time in the Atelier about punk rock, and how it developped not only its own community but its own economy. Of course it got co-opted, but I remember fondly as a youth things such as the Gilman Street Project (which still exists I’m told), along with MAXIMUMROCKNROLL which was always payable in cash. The shows and magazines were cheap, but you still paid for them. They were also easily sneak-in-able and photocopyable, which brings us also to digital distribution and filesharing. These two things are not mutually exclusive. Often, my students confuse anti-globalization with issues of monetary exchange (of any kind), whereas it’s far more instructive to look at the economies of scale rather than getting bogged down on whether or not to pay people for stuff-you-want™ anyway. They looked at me a little screwy last week when I suggested that it’s a good idea to sell your music and software for a few bucks. We were discussing these issues in relation to the recent Microsoft XNA Game Studio announcement for independent developers. They just snickered, « sure iTunes is cool, but it’s always cheaper on Emule ».

« Sell your games! »

All that said, I disagree when it comes to Tale of Tales’ « Game art is slave art » : « Make art-games, not game-art. Game art is just modern art – ironical, cynical, afraid of beauty, afraid of meaning. » I don’t know who they’re referencing here, but I can think of a few, and if so, I don’t agree. While I’m sympathetic to their attitude there, I think there is still a lot of fun to milked out of irony and cynicsm. It’s a little too easy to embrace the populist spirit 100% – down with sophistication and all that hogwash. That’s why I like the ENIAROF spirit – we can be highbrow and lobrow and whatever. What I personally find so interesting about the emerging Kaiju-culture is how it’s both cynical/ironic and fun. Like money and sharing, these two terms are not mutually exclusive.

Update: I forgot to mention that Tale of Tales exhibited their Endless Forest at the ZeroOne festival this summer. It looked very pretty but I didn’t really have time to play with it, unforunately.

• 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]

• 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?

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…

• Installations: Invaders!, BitBox & BitPong
• Concept & Development: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: Salle d’arcade ENIAROF
• Artists: Djeff Regottaz, Collectif M2f, ATO, Douglas Edric Stanley, Jankenpopp
• Festival: Festival Emergences, Paris
• Dates: 29 September – 1 October, 2006
• Info: Emergences Dossier Presse

Ok, so I lied. Yes I’m working on my thesis, but I also promised a while back to exhibit an older work at Villette Emergences as part of the ENIAROF attraction there. If all goes well I will also be showing the BitBox, and perhaps as well BitPong which are both playful uses of the computer science concept of the bitmask. You can already play the BitBox online, but BitPong will only be relevant in its physical manifestation. I’ll post more later when I have some decent pictures.

As usual, all the interresting journalists at ZeroOne were bloggers (i.e. all the interresting journalists weren’t journalists). Among them was Alexa from Art Future, who just uploaded this video she took during the festival. You can check it out here, or over at her YouTube account where she has a few other videos taken during the festival [link]. If you want more info on this system, check out the information on the following link: Cubed.

Soooooooo my demo is a little cheesy, and as usual I stutter a bit, wave my arms about a lot, and repeat myself repeat myself — but it gives you pretty much the A-Z pitch I recycled throughout the week. So now I can so now I can just point people to the video (thanks Alexa ;-). There was also another blogger who shot a longer walkthrough of the entire installation. So as soon as he gets that online I‘ll link to it here. Apparently his will be a video podcast with a lot of interviews from the show.

**Update: Lise from Arborescence just told me that they have programmed a similar Rubik’s cube performance system for this year’s festival by Artificiel, although it apprently doesn’t use the full cube as a sequencer. This probably makes it more interresting musically, but also a whole lot easier to compose/program, so less interresting conceptually. It’s always frustrating to see such similar work, but we don’t live in an artistic bubble, and ideas like this tend to appear in groups. Ho hum, I’ll try not to worry about it. I released mine in May 2005, they did their performance in May 2006 (take that!), but when you think about it Toshio Iwai was introducing these ideas way back in the early 90′s. So he’s the real master. Whatever the case, I figured it would only be a matter of time before someone else tried something like this. Here are some pictures of their premiere at Mutek : link. Different configuration, same idea, and theirs does look pretty cool.*

Here are some pictures from the abstractmachine installation at the ZeroOne Festival.

Google alerted me to this video of the Cubed installation at ZeroOne. I don’t know who took it (alt4ir?), and the sound kinda sucks (all you can hear is the ambient noise unless you crank it way up). But that has more to do with the exhibition conditions and the way I set up the installation (I designed it so that the sound would point down directly to the cube user’s ears and not to a camera’s lateral mic). It was taken with a tripod which is nice. I have somewhat better images and video (although not much better), but I haven‘t taken the time to put them online yet because I’m busy tying up loose ends, working on my thesis, and getting ready for my trip back to France. There were a lot of people filming and taking pictures, including filmed walk-throughs with me babbling on, so hopefully we’ll see some more online; and as I mentioned, I’ll have my own footage when I get the time.

There is a short article on 8=8’s performance at Scopitone over at Regarde. They also took a video of one of our morning performances (stream, ftp download).

This is just a quick post, before setting up tomorrow at ZeroOne. More noise to follow about this installation — I mean that literally — and how you can play with a new mix at home that we’ve prepared for the festival, and yes that’s “we”. Update soon. For now, here are some images I took before the move from my lowly garage in Los Altos to this strange tent structure.

Ok, so the big box has been shipped, and I’m on my way back to my home town of Los Altos, where I’ll be preparing for the ZeroOne festival in early August. I’ve made some changes to the official abstractmachine lineup, so check back here in a few days for the final exhibit plans along with all sorts of other information.

If you’re in town for ISEA, let me know…

This is just a quick post to thank the indefatigable Régine Débatty for giving me a chance to rant against the French and exploitive media art festivals over at we-make-money-not-art. I probably said a few things that will come back to haunt me, but what the hell. At least I was able to discuss a little where I’m going with my current research, and to make yet another plug for Processing and explain why it is good for art schools (as if you haven’t heard by now).

[Link]

• Installation: ^3, a.k.a.³, a.k.a. “cubed”
• Concept+Design: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: ZeroOne San Jose
• Dates: August 7 – 13, 2006
• Play! Online (requires Shockwave)
• Video (via YouTube) : Cubed Demo
• Video (iPod compatible) : Cubed Demo

The « ³ » terminal is working and ready for the august show. One down, three to go.

I was so excited that I quickly set up a camera, forgot to do a decent white balance, and did a one-take video recording with the crappy Quicktime Midi Instruments. So don’t expect much. Obviously I’ll have better instruments for the exhibit, but you’ll have to wait for that. I need to move on to the next terminal as this one took a long time to finalize. But if you’re curious as to how the system works, you can check out the vidceo. Just keep in mind that this is an early demo…

I was suprised to discover that several of the various methods for “solving” the cube are actually musically interesting. Although I’ve been learning several methods over the past few weeks, I figured that I’d have to create new algorithms for permutations that do not seek to solve the cube, but rather seek to make interesting music from it. As it turns out, these two approaches are not incompatible. That said, I really need to speed up my cubing skills. It takes me around 3 min. average to solve it when I’m not making music, and that just won’t do for a live performance when permutations should switch back and forth quickly. Some have got it down to under 20 seconds, so 3 minutes is a joke…

I never said the instrument was designed to be easy to use…