Tomorrow I’ll be taking part in a radio debate on the subject of collaboration between artists and technicians, with the opening question: « how do artists and technicians work together ? ».
It is an odd formulation, no matter how commonplace, especially considering the obvious role form and forming play in any production of art. As if the artist came before the forming, instead of the other way around, or (even better) simultaneously. But of course, the idea itself has become so common that we have somehow taken it for granted as if by mere repetition we had somehow forgotten to distinguish temperament and disposition : art and technique are somehow, in some parallel universe that would be simultaneously our own, two disparate entities that after having been separated at birth can now be brought together in some novel embrace. That we still have to disentangle ourselves from such artificial constructs, it’s maddening. Art and the technosciences, two opposing forces brought together at last, how charming an idea — how charming, and how charmingly tedious. When do we get to move on from the preliminaries to the actual nature of our contemporary state of affairs?
I’m posting this quite late, but there are a few hours left in Anne Roquiny’s latest incarnation of WJ-S, a system she designed for audivisually mixing the web, like a DJ, or a VJ, hence « WJ ». At the Maison des métallos in Paris, Anne, along with Anne Laforet and Isabelle Arvers will be mixing the Internet while speakers of various ilk simultaneously discuss the last 15 years of artistic creation on the web.
Since I couldn’t make it up to Paris (train strikes), I’ve instead posted this pre-recorded presentation which will be mixed in with a series of links I was asked to comment. *Note: My presentation starts at 23h20.
Here are the links I discuss (in their order of appearance):
On Saturday, I’ll be speaking at « code_source », an exhibit organized by Etienne Mineur (cf. Incandescence) as part of the Féstival international de l’affiche et du graphisme de Chaumont. The exhibit will attack the question « what is interaction design? » through a historical survey of software, hardware, theoretical productions and games from this still-emerging field. There will also be a section devoted to the creations of art and design students from France, Colombia, USA, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, China, etc. This is where I fit into the picture, as several works from our Atelier Hypermédia in Aix-en-Provence will be documented in the exhibit (more details to come).
Several designers, yours truly included, were also asked to discuss the subject of interaction design for the French graphic design magazine Étapes in conjunction with « Code_source ». We were all asked the same set of questions related to the definition itself of Interaction Design as well as the historical landmarks that influenced us. The selected designers were: Geoffrey Dorne, Jean-Jacques Birgé, Jean-Louis Fréchin, Gabriel Jorby, Éric Viennot, Projet Mü, and abstractmachine and have just been published in the May 2009 edition of Étapes (#168). Here are a few photos of my interview.
You can read the article yourself for my full comments, but here are video links to the four historical events I chose to highlight: Ivan Sutherland, Sketchpad (1963); Myron Krueger, Videoplace (1972-); Seymour Papert, Logo (1967-); Steve Russel et al., Spacewar! (1962). These are fairly standard responses, I know, but I was dealing with an audience (graphic designers) that often confuse (contemporary) software with the conceptual frameworks that made them possible. From this perspective, some history can do little harm.
Of all the interviews, I thought that Jean-Louis Fréchin’s list was the coolest:
The dissociation of gold and the dollar, thereby « announcing the birth of a society of immateriality and exchange »
The personal computer (« augmenting people’s capacities and means of expression »)
1969, the year of the moon landing, for its’ introduction of « mass transportation (747), hyperspeed (Concorde) and networks (Arpanet) », i.e. the concerns and constructs of our present world
So, as I mentioned above, several works produced in part at the Atelier Hypermédia over the past 10 years will be documented at « Code_source ». Here is a list of the works (sorry, in French, but at least I’ve included some images/videos) :
Le WebWaste est une poubelle sur Internet. Par l’activation d’un robot-éboueur, ses utilisateurs se font vider automatiquement le contenu de leurs poubelles (sur ordinateur) dans cette décharge collective (Internet). Les document s’empilent sur le serveur de la décharge. En visitant le site web www.webwaste.net, n’importe qui peut ensuite naviguer à travers les images, textes, sons et vidéos dont d’autres auraient souhaitaient se débarrasser. On peut y chercher de l’inspiration, ou y flâner par curiosité — avec la possibilité bien sûr de récupérer des fichiers pour une consommation chez soi. Les règles sont ouverts, on peut y faire ce que l’on veut : jouer, manifester, dire la vérité ou proliférer des mensonges — c’est aux utilisateurs de choisir.
Dans l’Atelier Hypermédia, nous trouvons qu’il est parfois pratique de suivre le principe de « Just Fuck Around® » quand il s’agit d’apprendre une nouvelle technologie. Dans ce visualiseur/jeu, il n’y a pas eu d’autre but que d’apprendre les fonctionnalités 3D de base du logiciel multimédia Director. Ce modéliseur 3D a été le résultat d’une heure d’expérimentation avec quelques heures d’ajustements par la suite. Il n’y a pas réellement d’autre but que celle de l’exploration d’une nouvelle forme.
Le flux télévisuel est pris en tant que potentiel, un potentiel d’images, de mouvements et de signes. Le processus y extrait, de façon automatisée et en temps réel, toutes les parties d’images qui ont changé lors de la diffusion de l’émission télévisuelle. Il les capture et les redistribue ensuite de façon spatio-temporelle sur une boucle de vingt-quatre images. En l’exposant au spectateur image par image, il agit ainsi sur la diffusion elle-même, en gardant en mémoire et en présentant potentiellement plusieurs fois chaque fragment d’image. L’esprit hypnotisé s’habitue aux fragments, voire les attend et tente de les recomposer. Mais cet effet recherché de rémanence n’empêche pas un effacement progressif de la configuration. Car chaque fragment additionné à la boucle est présent et répété jusqu’à ce qu’un autre le recouvre et ainsi de suite jusqu’à sa disparition et son oubli.
Lors de son passage à l’Atelier Hypermédia, Nao expérimentait principalement avec les formes interactives où image, son et jeu se mélangeaient en une seule entité audiovisuelle. Pour ses performances extra-muros, Nao a décidé de créer un instrument nomade qui nécessiterait uniquement une machine connecté à Internet pour être joué.
Tetris adventure est une variation autour du célèbre jeu de réflexion, mais se jouant désormais en ligne de commande. Il faut entrer manuellement les commandes au clavier dans la console pour faire se déplacer les pièces. Ce changement au sein même du gameplay instaure un rapport au temps différent. La réactivité du jeu n’est plus immédiate et impose au joueur de faire preuve de davantage de stratégie et de réflexion.
Il s’agit également d’un hommage aux premiers jeux d’aventure textuels (Adventure ), où le joueur devait entrer en toutes lettres les instructions.
Quelques faits intéressants à propos de Tetris adventure:
-Tetris adventure est déconseillé aux dylsexique, dixlesquique, dyslexiques.
-Tetris adventure est conseillé par le Medef pour former des dactylos plus performantes.
-L’homme qui a 8 doigts à chaque main est également le champion du monde de Tetris adventure.
Liste des commandes:
[gauche] déplacer la pièce à gauche
[droite] déplacer la pièce à droite
[tombe] faire tomber la pièce
[tourne] faire tourner la pièce
Tetris adventure a été conçu et présenté à l’occasion d’Eniarof 0.4, une fête foraine revisitée, qui laisse (entre autres) une large place aux détournements de jeux vidéos.
8=8 est un groupe de 4 programmeurs / 4 compositeurs / 4 VJs / 4 musiciens / 4 artistes. Tout les quatre apportent leur propre sensibilité esthétique et techniques dans un instrument numérique collectif: L’Hypertable. Par le déplacement de leurs mains sur la surface de l’Hypertable, images et sons sont générés, créant une opportunité unique d’improvisation musicale. 8=8 utilise l’Hypertable pour y jouer des programmes / instruments originaux, dans des contextes de concert / performance / demo.
En 2003, Douglas Edric Stanley crée « L’hypertable » – dispositif d’image/surface interactive. En 2005 il invite trois de son atelier à Aix-en-Provence à se joindre à lui : TM (a.k.a. Thomas Michalak), univers grouillant et mécanique ; Naoyuki Tanaka (artiste japonais résidant à Marseille) ; JankenPopp avec son monde teinté de fraises tagada et d’énergie punk ; et enfin l’univers d’ abstractmachine, plutôt sobre et conceptuel. L’hypertable a été co-produit par le CIREN, avec le soutien d’Arcadi, le DICREAM, et le SCAM.
The mashup-machine est un instrument electronique qui prend la forme d’une boite en bois surmontée de quatre boutons lumineux. Chaque bouton de la taille d’une main permet la manipulation et le mixage intuitif de plusieurs sources multimédia aléatoires. La machine est une interface polyvalente, dynamique et expérimentale qui a été utilisée de 2005 à 2007 lors de performances AV et de concerts lives, elle a également été présentée en tant qu’installation sonore interactive lors de festivals et d’expositions collectives (Eniarof 0.2.2, Festival Emergences).
Deux GameBoy reliées par un câble sont posées sur une réplique miniature d’une table de pingpong. Les visiteurs sont invités à jouer a une version classique du jeu vidéo « Pong » (jeu de tennis). À la différence du jeu original la balle n’est pas visible par les deux joueurs en même temps mais passe d’un écran à l’autre en créant la surprise.
Partant du concept de la machine schizophrénique chez Deleuze et Guattari, le « Gameboy nucleus » est une technologie pour laquelle les facultés de commandes auraient été mises à l’extérieur de la machine construisant ainsi une machine en perpétuelle reconstitution. Autrement dit, ce « nucleus » suit un processus de « physicalisation » dans laquelle l’algorithme, le programme, ou le code, s’exprime à travers des objets tirés entre fonctionnement physique et fonctionnement logiciel.
« Objets Orientées-Objet » (workshop), Douglas Edric Stanley avec l’assistance d’Anne-Laure Schneider et de Pierre Rossel, 2005
Workshop avec les étudiants de l’Haute École d’Art et de Design Genève avec la participation de l’Atelier Hypermédia ESA Aix-en-Provence
Ce workshop de 5 jours exploraient différentes possibilités de l’utilisation du dispositif « Hypertable » créé à l’origine par Douglas Edric Stanley pour son logiciel de cinéma algorithmique Concrescence. Trois étudiants et un enseignant ont terminé des projets pour lors de ce workshop : Pierre-Erick Lefvbre, Jana Korcjomkina, Pierre Rossel, Baptiste Coulon (dans l’ordre d’apparition des projets).
« Déplacements » est constitué de 24 ventilateurs formant un rectangle. Chaque ventilateur est « pixel », sa vitesse de rotation et l’intensité de la lumière de ses LED varient en fonction du niveau de gris correspondant au pixel de référence. Cet écran de ventilateurs est piloté par un ordinateur sur lequel tourne un programme simulant un automate cellulaire intitulé « Le jeu de la vie » (créé par John Horton Conway en 1970). C’est un modèle mathématique où chaque ventilateur est une cellule. «Déplacement » en tant que détournement de cet objet, composant de l’ordinateur, devenant image. Il ne s’agit pas d’un « déplacement » physique mais d’un mouvement, d’un flux.
Stefan Piat travaille sur la reconstitution de monuments et d’espaces en utilisant un système de mosaïques photographiques et vidéographiques qu’il relie dans des cartes dynamiques et interactives. Dans Forsinicola, Piat construit le Fort Saint Nicolas à Marseille. S’y mèle non seulement des images de formats divers, mais surtout des images avec des temporalités multiples, allant du cliché instantané à la chronophotographie (Marey/Muybridge) en passant par des ralentissements et des images-panoramiques. Le tout s’agrège dans une forme qui peut se décomposer et se recomposer selon les mouvements du joueur et du programme.
Que nous habitions là où Cézanne peignait, que nous y vivions ou que nous traversions quotidiennement les paysages que Cézanne a peints, nous sommes tous un peu des habitants de ses peintures. Le studio de création Digital Deluxe a conçu et réalisé Le Voyage immobile, une invitation à partager cet héritage commun. Mais de quoi s’agit-il ? D’un module itinérant que l’on va retrouver dans l’espace public : le centre ville, les villages, les lycées, etc. qui va offrir au passant une découverte sensorielle de l’univers du peintre.
C’est le Centre européen de création et de développement culturel (CECDC) qui a lancé cette ambitieuse réalisation en collaboration avec l’association Terre active. Elle permet d’évoquer, sans chercher à la reproduire ni à l’expliquer, l’expérience sensorielle que représentait l’acte de peindre chez Cézanne. Voici donc une promenade interactive, différente, et sans bouger d’un pouce, sur les pas de Cézanne. Une balade qui, du paysage à l’oeuvre, permet d’évoquer le regard de Cézanne sur la nature, de comprendre le passage du motif au tableau.
Production CECDC / Conception et réalisation Digital Deluxe / Itinérance et tournée Terre Active
Le système présenté est une installation venteuse, constituée de 15 ventilateurs disposés en cercle. Chaque ventilateur souffle en fonction d’informations fournies en temps réel par Internet et utilise le flux de stations météo du monde entier pour générer des dessins à la surface d’une feuille.
Chessynthesis est un dispositif sonore qui transforme deux joueurs d’échecs en des musiciens. Chessynthesis analyse en temps-réel les mouvements de chaque pièce sur le plateau, même celle qui se trouve dans la main du joueur. Avec ses informations, il interprète les indices tactiques/stratégiques du jeu, les tensions, les centres de gravité, et les transcode en de la musique avec de la synthèse granulaire.
« Episureo », Stefan Schwabe & Sebastian Neitsch, 2008
développé à l’Ecole supérieure d’art Aix-en-Provence et au Kunstuniversität Linz
The paths we choose to follow each day, to go to work, to move around in our own homes or even the ways we move during our free-time are mostly pre-defined by architecture, human crowds or subconsciously learned behaviours. During all this, the personal space we keep around ourselves depends on the place we are at and the people surrounding us. We all need privacy but also depend on social relationships and so-for on close contacts to other humans. Our aim is to show this never-ending, pulsing conflict and the trails the participants leave in space and time.
To realize this within an interactive installation, we had to find a place where the participants would stay for quite a while and where they would have to move consciously but also relaxed. We wanted the people to naturally communicate to each other so that groups would appear and we needed them to move in a quite large radius. A swimming pool is almost perfect for this. It is like a stage you step on and just by its architectural form, it already pre-defines paths the swimmers usually follow and with which we as authors can play. On top of that the swimming and the water might relax the visitors so that they have the time and mind to concentrate on the installation. This was never been done before, so not only the visualisation of movement and the dynamics of human crowds where our main topics now, but also the difficult task to convert a public swimming pool into a huge interface.
The picture on the ceiling responds via motion-tracking to the swimmers in the water. Depending on their movements, their speeds and their distances to each other, the visualisation changes and with the help of an underwater loudspeaker variant sounds are generated. Abstract graphics slowly appear and get more and more complex after time, showing trails, movements and the group dynamics in the pool. To picture
the whole movement and not only the one of each single swimmer, sometimes a kind of current appears that influences the whole visualisation.
développé au studio Lentigo, ENSBA Marseille avec l’assistance de l’Atelier Hypermédia ESA Aix-en-Provence
La ville est complexe, en perpétuelle mutation. Les flux d’images, d’information et de déplacement superposent en strates. Dans Node City, on se déplace à l’intérieur de ses strates via un système de navigation corporelle : autour de notre corps une projection au sol nous immerge à l’intérieur d’une carte que l’on peut explorer tout simplement en se déplaçant. Via un système de surveillance, on repère les promeneurs et leur propose un carrefour mobile de vidéos à explorer; en se baladant on découvre les différentes strates audiovisuelles de la ville.
shades of white, mêlant danse, images et son, a été pour le festival les affluents au pavillon noir d’aix-en-provence, en collaboration avec bruno péré. l’idée principale est une évolution de la lumière blanche au travers de ses trois composantes colorées : rouge, vert et bleu. les projections sont la seule source de lumière pour les danseurs sur scène. elles sont diffusées au sol, sur le mur du fond, voire les deux.
la majeure partie de ces histoires colorées est programmé, puis exportée en vidéo et montée sur logiciel vidéo. voilà un petit résumé sur ce que l’on a essayé de symboliser par ces temps colorés :
le rouge est le commencement, comme une naissance hésitante et fragile.
le vert correspond à la création d’un espace hésitant, une sorte de paysage sans dimension.
le bleu est le résidu, après l’explosion blanche des trois couleurs réunies.
tantôt au mur, tantôt au sol, la lumière est image. l’image est matière. le mouvement du corps évolue avec un espace coloré qui se raconte peu à peu. rouge. vert. bleu.
Some time has passed since my Invaders! installation started something of a $#!¥storm back in August at the Leipzig Games Convention. I tried to give the piece some context and gave a few interviews to responsible journalists, but ultimately the whole thing just blew up as people lost all sense of scale and started taking for granted all sorts of assumptions about the work. Ok, so that’s the backstory, and you can think of all that what you will.
But now that hipster pop acts such as Röyksopp are reportedly referencing the work (I have my doubts) and given that some time has gone by, it is perhaps finally possible to post this video which I have already been showing to crowds at various talks over the past few months. It’s actually not that great of a video, but it does shed a little more light on what actually was going on in Leipzig. As it has been reported elsewhere, there was something of a disconnect between the public reaction to the piece on-site, and people’s reaction on-line. Playing it was apparently very different than just reporting on its visual aspects, especially the types of images at the end of the video, I assume, where you can see the full extent of the damage of the buildings as the game matches ever more closely the historical progression of events (planes, impact, fire, structural damage, jumpers, etc). It would obviously be better to release a more complete video tracing the way in which the game itself mapped the historical events back onto the 8-bit classic, but given that the Games Convention itself wasn’t really the ideal place for this type of analytic meditation anyway, I’ll just go with this video testimony of people playing it, as it was presented. Some people only saw either the Kotaku image, or the Laboral Video, which made for another form of disconnect as people didn’t understand what was actually going on and therefore what the fuss was all about.
Here’s the Röyksopp video by the way:
If it’s true that Röyksopp is referencing my piece, that’s very cool, especially since it’s a great song. Again, I have my doubts since many pop acts don’t really use imagery all that critically, pull $#!¥ in from any direction, and therein pastiche everything into one big self-same pile. It’s always frustrating to see the extent to which music videos often end up whitewashing the images they reference. There is a long history to this tendency, although there is perhaps one recent notable exception: Justice’s « Stress » which was able to reference Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and recontextualize it with a new political charge which it successfully maintained throughout, going so far as to provoke significant debate in France concerning the ontological status of the image (Is it protest? Is it glorification? Is it criticism?):
Pulling all this back to the Invaders! debate, I actually had an interesting public conversation with Louis Bec last november at the Biennale Figures of Interactivity while presenting this work. According to Bec, there are certain complex calculations in mathematics that require the introduction of a « zone d’ombre» in order to be resolved, and that if you do not in fact include this shadow region, the equation becomes incalculable. Bec tried to draw an analogy by suggesting that September 11th had become culturally unthinkable, and that in order to re-render it imaginable so as to process it, a certain « zone d’ombre » is required, which he suggested comes here in the form of a historical reconstruction (or simulation) of the event which reconstructs the violence in a highly symbolic form so as to able to process it. He went on to create similar analogies with animal simulations of violence and combat in play, and so on. That last part is actually part of the general narrative gamers often use defending the role of violence in video games and I don’t know if I want to get lost down that path because the argument hangs on a certain subtlely that often gets lost in translation. But beyond this idea of simulation, for Louis, the ambiguity of this work « on violence » is merely one of the pre-requisites of needing a shadowy region in order to render the violent act re-thinkable.
It’s in French (désolé pour ceux qui n’en parlent pas) and it handles the usual suspects (code, teaching, gaming, and on-line tutorials). As it turns out, a lot of people use my cours sur la programmation dans Processing. So Weecast wanted me to talk about them and tried to convince me to make some videos for their site which is all about online tutorials (en français, sorry). Just last week I had people from Brazil, Spain and two schools here in France describe how they use my online courses. All that’s great, but the classes are kinda old and really need some updating, and most of all, should be video tutorials. The problem is of course that I only have so many hours in the day and I’m in the middle of a gazillion other projects. For me to take time out right now I need some sort of context where I can get paid for the time taken away from other projects. So at first I was very interested at Weecast’s proposal: remaking my Processing tutorials into video webcasts that I can get paid for. Their model is pretty reasonable and the prices are low. But therein lies the rub, and the ethical dilemma. I personally would prefer either some sort of advertising model or some sort of sponsorship when it comes to making on-line classes on Processing, because Processing is ultimately free software (as in freedom as well as in beer). These are all old dilemmas, I know, but I still feel like they haven’t been resolved. As I mention in the interview, imagine having to pay a few bucks to learn how to use sound in Processing. As we say in French, c’est un peu vache (“it’s kinda cow”?). For the moment I’ve suggested to Weecast: hey, find some public funding or sponsorship so that we can make those specific classes free. But I’m not so sure that’s really a model. Hmmm.
I dunno, a sort of ambiguous issue for me. Anyone have any other ideas?
I ran into the organizers of the Gamerz exhibit this evening on my way back from the workshop. They asked, « Did you see ? » « See what ? » « Your interview in Joystick magazine! » Cringe… Oh god, I’d forgotten about that. Then they really started to laugh as they realized that I hadn’t seen the picture they used. « Well, you’ve got a big picture in there with a funny helmet on your head ». Oh my. I forgot that anyone who wants to can grab my pictures off flickr, which is actually a pretty good thing for my ego now that I think about it. I’m going to have to learn to live with my mug one of these days.
The interview is okay. I talk a little about code, teaching, and games in no particular order. Pretty fluffy. It was nice to talk about a lot of young artists’ work though. If you don’t already read Joystick, it’s no use buying the magazine. The articles are pretty bad. They didn’t mangle my interview, so that’s very nice of them, but they didn’t put much in there to begin with so whatever. The article that it’s connected to (on experimental gaming) is pretty strange. The first half basically apologizes to the gamer fanboys for bothering them about some obscure subject they probably won’t care that much about. Kind of a strange way to write if you ask me. But what do I know? I write a blog.
Times & Dates: 18h, Monday January 29th; 18h, Tuesday January 30th; 18h, Wednesday January 31st
Speakers: Jean Cristofol, Douglas Edric Stanley, Paul Devautour (Art et propriété intellectuelle); Emmanuel Vergès, Philippe Aigrain, François Deck (Société de l’information et économie de l’immatériel); Fabienne Orsi, Jean Cristofol, Bertrand Jordan (Appropriation du vivant)
The first conversation took place between Paul Devautour, Jean and me, and will be rebroadcast on the 29th. I have to admit, as usual I was pretty lame and didn’t have all that much to say. I suppose I was a little taken aback when at the start of the conversation the fellow interviewing me had no §@#&*$% idea who the hell I was, so didn’t really ask me very good questions. Please, journalists, either come prepared, or simply have the humility to ask! Little by little we got there, but, well, it wasn’t easy. Paul and I went back and forth over a topic he and I disagree about — i.e. the role of design in art schools and society — so that part of the debate should be fairly energetic. But the most important section, i.e. the relationship between art and private property, was pretty much a bore. Perhaps in the editing room they can make it a little spicier. Basically Paul, Jean, and I have all been working towards the same cause, fighting the new laws on intellectual property, so there wasn’t really much to debate.
What we didn’t have time to get to, was the role hacking is playing in the current debate. For example, I am in a strange position right now where the work that I and my students are doing in my atelier has been rendered hors-la-loi by the very Minister of Culture that is supposed to be defending my rights as an artist. All in the name of DRM, he passed a law that goes easy on light piracy (peer-to-peer) with fines that range from a few hundred dollars to caps set at two thousand. That’s the part that was designed to keep the public at bay. But as for those that would dare inform others how to bypass digital rights management, well the fines can go up to about 35,000€. Sympa, as we say here in France. Open Source software, this means you.
Now, of course, all this is open to interpretation, so we will see what happens in the courts, but the idea behind all this is to lock up the system such that large media players can operate freely by distributing whatever protection formats they like, and thereby unleash state-sanctioned private software virii throughout our machines, infiltrating the infinite recesses of our own folders and files. Nobody asked for this. Sony, on the one hand, gets lawsuits over their Rootkit, while on the other hand, the French law similar technologies a legal reality. And anyone caught explaining to people how to free up their media from these formats will be severely punished. In my situation, this means that the classes I teach on hacking into gaming consoles are basically illegal if someone wanted to take the time out to make our lives difficult. Which is of course completely rediculous, because we all know the importance of hacking to keep these platforms economically alive, and even give them a second life.
What I am interested in, is seeing how we can usher in a new generation of artistic forms that are based on generative or simply algorithmic processes, i.e. media creations that match the modular nature of the machines that animate them. An iPod is a little computer, so ultimately I should be able to generate not just music files for that little machine, but actual musical programs or patches. For example, Maxim Marion told me the other day that it is now fairly easy to put Pure Data patches onto Linux’ed iPods. But when you look at the new French DRM laws, they are designed precisely to protect the holders of massive libraries of old, un-dynamic media. And since the new gadgets are becoming more and more tied to the media themselves (i.e. iTunes), it is become harder and harder to open up this new potential field. We can hack into these machines (with some risks, see above), but we cannot distribute our creations on them because only the select few will have opened them up. It seems amazing to me, although quite telling, that someone like Brian Eno can make generative compositions for video games (cf. Spore), but not for the iPod. Perhaps it’s the case that we are simply going to have to don the sheep’s clothing of video games for everything we do artistically, just to get our foot in the door?
Lame coder’s joke, okay, but it’s just to give notice that I really am busy right now and won’t be posting much during the holidays. It’s the last rush to finish my thesis which will be added to this space when it’s done. You can also follow progress on individual sections via the various links above.
It’s a little sad: back when I was studying philosophy, literature and all things wordly I used to be quite prolific; I even wrote a novel (egad!). Writing was such a pleasure then and I did it every day, often for long hours at a stretch. But writing this thesis, even if I know everything I want to say, is so… hard. Despite the little wonderful inspired moments, I just have so many distractions these days that it’s hard to find that time for myself to just close shop and get everything done.
For example, if you’re in Aix-en-Provence tomorrow, I’ll be listening to my friend Paul Devautour tomorrow afternoon, followed by a recording for Radio Grenouille where Paul, Jean Cristofol and I will discuss the current state of intellectual property. Our discussion will be broadcast in mid-January. You see? There we go again, more distractions…
Luckily I found an old love in the attic while looking for a book. Ah, at least I now have a soundtrack to keep me going; and thanks to some top-notch customer service from Bose, a new pair of headphones to shut out unwanted noise and bathe in all that soothing distortion (now if they could just do something about email).
P.S. Since I’ll be a little quieter than usual, I just wanted to take a second out and say : (ok, I’m gonna sound hokey here) I really enjoy all the emails people send me and although I reply to everyone, it sometimes takes me a few days weeks. But I love it, know that — and don’t forget to send pictures of your wrapping paper!
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.
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?
