abstractmachine

In 1958, the American physicist William Higinbotham created what is one of the first instances of what we would today call a modern “video game”. The game, named Tennis For Two, was built at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for their yearly open-house presentations of the lab’s activities. The game was built using an oscilloscope and a programmable analog computer, the Donner Model 30. It simulated a simple tennis match between two players, with a sideways perspective of the net and a ball bouncing back and forth, controlled by two player-manipulated inputs.

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• Podcast: Playable Character
• Episode: 004: Invaders!, History, and Chip Music Controversy
• Interviewees: Douglas Edric Stanley, Trevor Owens, Marty Kraham a.k.a. TV Death Squad
• host: Shane Hinton
• Download: playablecharacter_004
• iTunes link: Playable Character

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Conférence : « Vers une esthétique ludique » Conférencier : Douglas Edric Stanley Date & heure : 10h45-12h00, mardi le 14 décembre 2010 Lieu: Amphithéâtre, L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, map Live stream : SelfWorld dans le cadre du Festival Gamerz’06 update l’enregistrement de la conférence se trouve ici : Gamerz 06 Conférences Les organisateurs du Festival Gamerz’06 m’ont rajouté à la dernière minute (!?) dans la liste des conférences qui auront lieu cette semaine à L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence. Je parlerai juste après l’introduction du festival. Je reviendrai, entre autres, sur les rapports entre jeux vidéo et la création artistique, et plus [...]

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Installation: Traks Concept+Developement: Douglas Edric Stanley Platform: iPad Development platform: OpenFrameworks Exhibition: Gamerz 06 (site uses Flash) Dates: 3-16 December, 2010 Time: 14:00 – 19:00 Venue: Seconde Nature Location: 27 B Rue 11 Novembre, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France Traks is a combinatorial sound toy. Mixing model railroads and 1960′s minimalist composition, Traks allows players to build up circular networks of bifurcating rails that branch out into both simple and complex combinations of musical possibility. By placing notes, “tranes”, and semaphores into this ludic rail yard, a modular melody emerges, otherwise known as algorithmic music. Traks will be exhibited at the Festival [...]

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Update (22/11/2010). This exhibit has just been extended for another 6 months, due to it’s popularity. Exhibit: Museo Games Location: Musée des Arts et métiers, Paris Map: 60 Rue Réaumur 75003 Paris Curators: Pierre Giner, Stéphane Natkin, Loïc Petitgirard Scenography: Traffik Editorial content: Annick Rivoire Date+Time: 22 June 2010 – 13 March 2011; 10h-18h; Closed on Mondays Interviews: Game History: Nicolas Nova, Philippe Dubois, Stéphane Natkin Game Industry: Sophie Pène, Peter Molyneux, David Cage, Hideo Kojima, Philippe Ulrich Game Culture: Isabelle Arvers, Olivier Séguret, Douglas Edric Stanley, Invader Game Users: Frédérick Raynal, Milad Doueihi, Laurent Trémel, Gonzalo Frasca Conférences: Jeudi [...]

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Quick post to link up to the Gamerz 05 video that just went live and where you’ll find a few seconds of my bitPong installation. I also shot my own video of the piece, in which I take advantage of this little known device called a tripod, but since I still haven’t had the time to edit it I shouldn’t complain. When I finally find the time to link up the gazillion things I’m working on right now, you’ll hopefully understand why the silent treatment. Until then, here’s the video, with some of that all-around-sloppy-soup that we have come to [...]

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Installation: bitPong Concept + Development: Douglas Edric Stanley Platform: Hypertable | iPhone | iPad Development Platforms: Processing, Wiring Location: Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence (map) Festival: Gamerz.05 Dates: 26 november – 4 december 2009 Times: 10h – 13h / 14h – 17h I have finally found a venue to show a decent working version of bitPong, a piece I created some time ago when I was still working on the close relationship with phsyical implementations of data and their aesthetic consequences. The idea is simple: a two-player game, based on the uber-referenced Pong, here played with 8-bit controllers. When we say « [...]

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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 [...]

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Attraction: Henniraof Design & Development: Lola & Douglas Edric Stanley Festival: Eniarof 0.4 Dates: 27 + 28 March, 2009 Times: 18:00 – 24:00 Location: l’École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence Software: Henniraof.zip (Mac OS X) Development platform: OpenFrameworks Antonin Fourneau and I are gearing up for the next Eniarof which begins construction next Monday and will open March 27th and 28th for two evenings of fun (18h-24h), open of course to any and all publics (animal, mineral, vegetable, fantasmagorical, whatever). I’ll post more at a later date concerning Eniarof itself, what it is, etc, but for the moment I will simply mention [...]

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Exhibition: Festival Gamerz 04 Curators: Isabelle Arvers, Quentin Destieu, Romain Senatore Production: M2F Créations / Dardex Mort2Faim Sites: La scène numérique (Seconde Nature), l’École supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence, Galérie Sextius, Aix-en-Provence, France Dates: 6 January – 8 February 2009 Time: 14h-19h Artists: Lionnel Scoccimaro (Fr), Axel Stockburger (At), France Cadet (Fr), Pascal Silondi (Cz), Colson Wood (USA) & Monsieur Moo (Fr), Antonin Fourneau (Fr), Collectif Dardex-Mort2faim (Fr), Ivan Chabanaud (Fr), Damien Berthier (Fr), Paul Destieu (Fr), Pierrick Thébault (Fr), Djeff Regottaz (Fr), Loïc Horellou (Fr), Manuel Braun (Fr), Virgine Le Gall (Fr), Fenshu (Uk), Confipop (Fr), Jane Antoniontti (Atelier hypermédia de [...]

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Presentation: abstractmachine.vb7d8 Speaker: Douglas Edric Stanley Venue: Haute École d’Art et de Design Genève, Geneva, Switzerland Department: CCC Dates: 3 décembre, 2008 Time: 9h-12h / 14h-17h 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 [...]

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Biennale: Figures of Interactivity Symposium: Cinema, interactivity and society Venue: TAP, Poitiers, France Dates: November 19-21, 2008 Schedule Speakers: Hubertus Von Amelunxen, Bertrand Augereau, Jacques Aumont, Yves Bernard, Samuel Bianchini, Jean-Louis Boissier, Victor Burgin, Jean-Claude Bustros, Jim Campbell, Luc Courchesne, Frédéric Curien, Jean-Marie Dallet, Anne-Marie Duguet, Masaki Fujihata, Thierry Guibert, Christian Laroche, Georges Legrady, Alain Liedts, Julien Maire, Denis Mellier, Stephan Natkin, Bernard Perron, Louise Poissant, Yannick Prié, Vincent Puig, Jeffrey Shaw, Douglas Edric Stanley, Bernard Stiegler, Steina Vasulka, Gwenola Wagon, Gene Youngblood I’ll be travelling tomorrow to Poitiers for what looks like a very rich roster of speakers discussing… [...]

Continue reading « The Monstruous Image »

Last week Gee Magazine sent me this copy of their magazine with a short article based on an interview I gave them a few weeks back. It’s a minor article — this interview with Marie Lechner from Libération is far more complete — but from what I can understand from my weak German, it appears accurate. Here is a link from Spiegel Online of the same article but rebranded.

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Installation: Invaders! Concept & Development: Douglas Edric Stanley Assistant: Stéphane Cousot Development Library : OpenFrameworks Exhibition: Games Convention GC ART Special: From Outer Space / Space Invaders: the Anniversary Show / 30 Years of Space Invaders Curator: Andreas Lange, Computer Spiele Museum Location: Leipziger Messe GmbH, Hall 2, Stand H11 Dates: 21-24, August 2008 Video: Invaders! (Leipzig), Invaders! (From the Gameworld exhibition, Laboral, Gijòn, Spain) 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 [...]

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Software: OpenCV Library platforms: Mac OS X | Linux | Windows Design & Development: Stéphane Cousot, Douglas Edric Stanley Release date: July, 2008 Development platform: Processing OpenCV For Processing is an open-source library for integrating basic computer vision analysis and tracking within the Processing environment. It simplifies access to the powerful OpenCV library and offers a Java/JNI wrapper for artists, designers and multimedia developers looking to integrate OpenCV into their project. OpenCV Pour Processing est une librairie open-source permettant de l’analyse et de la reconnaissance basique à l’intérieur de l’environment de création, Processing. La bibliothèque simplifie l’intégration d’une librairie puissante [...]

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Installation: ^3 Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley Exhibition: Les Pixels (2) Location: ASCA, Beauvais, France (Map) Dates: December 7-21, 2007 Quick post for one of the quickest exhibits I’ve ever had to prepare. I’ll be exhibiting ^3 (aka Cubed) at Les Pixels, an exhibition that opens in Beauvais today. Where’s Beauvais you ask? I have no idea, but who the hell cares when it’s THE authentic « Ville Internet @@@@ 2007 » ? (Love that logo!) It’s a tiny festival, by a young non-profit with the right attitude, so I said what the hell. Who needs sleep anyway?

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Eddo Stern just posted the video we shot of his installation Darkgame. This is phase two of what looks to be a very intense game. I’m impressed with the game’s development roadmap, but I’ll let Eddo talk more about it when he’s ready. It should be very cool.

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I have just uploaded onto YouTube three videos documenting the three concurrent exhibitions (Feedback, Gameworld, Labcyberspaces) opening the new Laboral Centre de Arte in Gijón, Spain (March 30 – June 30, 2007). I have also included a short video documenting in more detail my installation Invaders! which is part of the Gameworld exhibition. This is a site-specific installation that I coded from scratch in just a few days using the Processing programming environment. In this video I’ve added some extra footage of the tracking software at work: I’m obviously privileging my own work in the Gameworld video (hey, get your [...]

Continue reading « Gameworld / Feedback / Labcyberspaces »

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 [...]

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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); [...]

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