abstractmachine

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.

Yet another in-preparation-for-ENIAROF post. This time we’re looking at a recent series of small video games that inspired us for the design of the workshop. The series is called bitgenerations, and is further proof that Nintendo currently is hovering just about as close as a multinational corporate video game company can to coolness. Just when it looked like the Gameboy platform was on its last legs (well, maybe it still is), Nintendo releases this very elegant, simple and very playable series of more or less abstract games. 3xd matrixes and pixelshaders are totally absent here, we’re talking hardcore pixels. Some of it is so simple that it could almost have been designed for the Atari 2600. It certainly feels like a nod to Nanoloop (which really opened up the Gameboy platform), especially when you listen to the soundtracks which have been designed with a lot of care, and un certain goût for 4-bit noise generators.

The original of the whole lot is Soundvoyager which I like to play while walking around Aix-en-Provence. No, that doesn’t get me hit by a bus, because Soundvoyager is a game you play entirely by listening to the audio. You can easily play the game without looking at the screen, and indeed little by little the images dissapear from the screen as you play anyway, requiring you to navigate within the various games entirely by using your ears. It’s a suprising concept, and is one of those things you have to play in order to understand. But here are some videos anyway, just to give you an idea:

The key to playing is having a good pair of headphones, as all the games use left-right stereo panning.

Some other interesting games are Orbital and Coloris:

Although it isn’t as beautiful as things like lia’s work, it’s definitely trying to wander around the same territories, especially games like Dotstream which is one of my favorites: instead of moving sprites, you draw directly onto a scrolling background layer (probably mode 0 in Gameboy programming-lingo). Since the background image is basically a buffer, I’m figuring they’re just drawing directly into it. But since that’s also a tile-only graphics mode, maybe they’re programming in mode 5 (8-bit color, maximum resolution) and creating their own scrolling routine (might be easier).

Going back to games like Scramble, you are in a side-scrolling landscape and have to avoid objects, with the added twist of having to avoid the robot players that are also drawing in the same environment.

If you’re interested in purchasing these games, you can find them at Play-Asia, although they’re probably easy to find on some filesharing network as well, although I don’t know which one. (ok, so, I like the packaging…) For those that are participating in ENIAROF, I will be bringing all of them so you can try them firsthand.

To continue the series on cool student work from the Atelier Hypermédia, and just in time for ENIAROF, comes this small portrait of Jankenpopp (pronounced Jan-ken with a hard J), i.e. Pierre-Erick Lefebvre. Janken has been a longtime collaborator on projects such as 8=8, my assistant for the Objets orientés objet workshop in Genève as well as for the Concrescence algorithmic cinema platform where he contributed significantly to the project. Until recently he was a student in Aix-en-Provence, and is now starting his post-graduate studies in the Atelier de Recherches Interactives at the prestigious ENSAD in Paris. Finally, he and Antonin Fourneau will be bringing the rest of ARI to my Atelier this Tuesday to create the next great noisy, goofy, dopey, thumping, stumbling, bumping, @#!&ing, beeping and booping machines for the ENIAROF Video Arcade.

The first thing you need to know about Jankenpopp is that he’s one of of those kick-ass mashup DJ breakcore dweebs:

He has several online albums you can download at: jankenpopp mp3s, my favorite track being Nova Swap.

The second thing you need to know is that he’s a lazy-ass programmer who makes totally cool mini-software online, i.e. however he feels like it, just piling on the code until he get’s what he wants. Usually it looks something like this (click on images to play, requires Shockwave) :

And then, the final thing you need to know is that all that occasionally gets rolled up into a ball and turned into more complex (and well-programmed) audiovisual musical ensembles where the images/programs play/generate the music:

Both of the above videos are collaborative efforts, but there are certain sections that have his signature all over them.

Oh, and I forgot, although it was also mentioned here earlier: he created the Jankenpopp-666 soundfont, for my Cubed installation at ZeroOne San Jose:

I was just reading this interview with Nolan Bushnell (via fluctuat) and sure enough, the former head of Atari was talking smack about the Playstation 3. He’s out of the game console loop, so I suppose his opinion as the head of a former video game empire is worth something (although he is currently developing a new casual gaming restaurant franchise that seems to be missing that japanese touch, côté design). Of course, Bushnell will always have a warm place in my heart — no, not for Pong, I’m talking about all the hours spent on Crazy Climber thanks to the local Chuck E. Cheese’s during my Silicon Valley youth. But while I find his criticism of the Playstation valid, I still couldn’t help hearing an echo of historical irony in his two major claims: the Playstation is doomed because Sony is arrogant and its developer tools suck.

Um, excuse me… Wasn’t Bushnell running Atari when they made the Atari VCS system? I’m sorry to remind people of this, but the VCS is one of the most difficult platforms to program, at least the most difficult I have ever seen (yes, I’ve peeked under the hood, it’s pretty insane). But that didn’t stop the 2600 from becoming one of the most popular video game consoles of all time. The quality of developer tools is one thing, market power and strategic timing is another. Just look at the NeXTStep. Bushnell is right, Sony has thus far screwed up the latter, but it still has the former, so Wii’ll just have to wait.

Ok, that last one was a bad joke, but even a cursory glance should make it fairly obvious which gaming platform I want to develop for.

P.S. hey Sony : cool Rubik’s Cube moves.

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]

Apparently, there are still fans of the Lexique de l’interactivité I wrote a little under ten years ago. Yikes! I was at the Arborescence festival when I was introduced to an interresting artist (more on her work later) who could recite my own texts back to me. The emotional effect was at once charming and creepy. It is also funny how each fan seems to attach himself or herself to a very different quote, and how it talks to each of them in very different ways — in fact in ways that have little to do with the way I currently view interactivity. Over the years I have occasionally met fans of this old text, but I had thought them long since gone. Apparently not. I also met some enthusiastic readers back in June after the 8=8 concert, so it looks indeed like my old cat just keeps coming back, no matter what I do to misplace it.

So under request, I’ve reactivated the lexique in all its embarassing glory, up on the main abstractmachine_menubar. Just look for the red cursor up on top of any abstractmachine page. I also updated the diagrams with a more appropriate icon to keep the confusion to a minimum.

I should also point out that all the interactive illustrations run in Shockwave which makes things a little complicated if you’re on a MacIntel like me. There are work-arounds explained on the opening page. The annoying thing is that you have to choose between the newer Processing-based diagrams or these older Director-based ones, requiring a brower restart to switch over from one to the other (I actually just keep two browsers open). Although this is rediculous, I find it almost poetically indicative of the state of Director as a development platform, especially when an open-source equivalent has been available for MacIntels for several months, indeed almost from the moment the machines were available.

• 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.*

• Speaker: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Presentation: « Une rencontre pour tisser des liens entre art, jeux vidéos, œuvres et pratiques ludiques »
• Date: 19h, 13 juin 2006
• Location: Le Cyber, Friche bel de Mai
• Address: 41, rue Jobin 13003 Marseille
• In partnership with: CCSTI – Agora des sciences
• More information: ZINC

Sorry to all my English-language readers, but I’m just about to leave for a presentation in Marseille and I promised to list a series of websites dealing with art + video games, or better said artistic explorations of video games and gaming culture. This list comes from a larger list I compiled for a multimedia festival looking to catch up on what’s going on in this scene.

Voici donc la liste pour la présentation de ce soir, de jeux video et quelques réappropriations artistiques de ce champ. Il s’agit de pièces historiquement importants pour la plupart, cherchez donc à mettre dans le contexte de l’année où elles auraient été crées. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de pièces uniquement fonctionnels, comme dans le premier cas:

• Space Invader
• Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds
• JODI, Untitled Game
• Painstation
• Alison Mealy, Unreal Art (cf. également son blog)
• Vuk Cosic, The ASCII Unreal
• C-Level
• Eddo Stern, Waco Ressurection
• Time’s Up
• Niklas Roy, PongMechanik
• nullpointer (a.k.a. Tom Betts), QQQ
• Ben Fry, Deconstructulator, Dismap, Mario Soup
• Natalie Bookchin, Intruder
• Perry Hoberman, Cathartic User Interface
• Exposition Games: Computer Games by Artists – Tilman Baumgärtel, Curator
• Art Games: An Introduction

Puis, des étudiants de L’école d’art d’Aix-en-Provence:

• We-make-terrorism-not-art
• Jankenpopp (cf. son diplôme DNSEP, aussi: Jankenblocks, Nimoloop & Lunch)
• ENIAROF
• Antonin Fourneau (cf. aussi le site d’ARI)
• le projet Play+mobile (cf. travaux)
• NAO

There are obviously many more artists who should be mentioned. But this is just to get the evening started… ;-)

• Installation: ^3, *a.k.a.*³, *a.k.a.* “cubed”
• Concept+Design: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Exhibition: ZeroOne San Jose
• Dates: August 7 – 13, 2006
• Platform: web-shockwave
• Video (via YouTube) : Cubed Demo, Douglas Edric Stanley – Rubik’s Cube DJ

³, a.k.a. ^3, a.k.a. ‘cubed’ is a musical sequencer integrated into a Rubik’s Cube®. Each face of the cube uses a different instrument to play notes generated according to the colors on that face. Each face is played in a loop, as if it were a single “track” on a basic electronic music sequencer. Therefore by manipulating the colors on the cube, users generate different sound algorithms within the sequencer.

³, a.k.a. ^3, a.k.a. ‘cubed’ est une séquenceur musicale intégré dans un Rubik’s Cube®. Chaque face du cube représente un instrument et joue les couleurs sur cette face en tant que notes. Chaque face est joué en boucle, comme s’il s’agissait d’une « piste » dans un séquenceur musicale.

Since the video from my last post was referenced over at Metafilter, I’ve received a lot of traffic. There are some interesting critiques over there, although I have heard a few of them before in private. The most common is the fact that you have to have the cube analyzed, instead of manipulating the emulated cube real-time. I will adress these issues in more detail at a later time, but it should be said for now that I have tried a real-time version, only to be frustrated by the lack of musical advantages — i.e. it just made everything messy, as it is ultimately a real-time sequencing instrument, and not a real-time note-for-note instrument. Added to this, is the problem of technically analyzing a cube without adding active electronics into the cube itself. I am researching the use of passive electronics in the cube, but that still means designing a Frankencube. I want people to Bring Your Own Rubik’s Cube (yes, that stands for BYORC Music), and even use the cube as a sort of floppy (floppy cube?) where you can “store” each composition and move back and forth during the performance.

Shortfuse quite correctly reminds me that I had originally spoken of the fluidity of a guitar. Although my inspiration was right (I think), the idea of using the guitar as an example was more confusing than obvious. A guitar, like a piano, works with discrete notes that are often played in combinations. On the guitar these notes are stroked using various rythmic motifs, i.e. via strumming. This is what I originally was interrested in: you have the permutation on the neck that you stroke with your other hand — permutation + interpretation. But of course the way the guitar is stroked is so much more expressive because variations can also be applied on the neck, and can lead to all sorts of amazing improvisations, putting it in a whole other league. I probably should have just avoided the guitar comparison altogether and talked about making a kick-ass interface for Max/MSP.

Like I said, there will be more information on the design of the instrument when ZeroOne opens and people can play it live. Also the conceptual framework for this instrument should be clearer. See you there.

Just a quick note that I just updated my ³ music synthesizer. Some people had written to mention that it was down — for once it wasn’t my fault ;-)

Shockwave and its xtras are of course a moving target, and have complicated matters once again, requiring me to finally house the xtras on my own server, since the provider’s server looks terminally down. It was an easy fix, but annoying. I have better things to do with my life.

Further complicating matters, the squencer xtra I use in this program has this horrendous licencing scheme which was not in effect when I started using it. But when they were bought out by Sibelius, the latter asked me to pay royalties, even for free downloads of my own software written with it. Are these people totally insane, or what? We started trying to find an amicable solution some time back, but they suddenly went silent. So I’m still in limbo on this one, and don’t even mention what is going to happen with the switch to MacIntel, which is already in effect for some users. Ugh.

I finally took the time out to fix this because I’m developing a full scale terminal for this machine, which should be ready for ZeroOne San Jose (August 2006).

Antonin Fourneau has just published the DOGMeNIAROF over at the ENIAROF blog. It is of course inspired by Lars von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg’s Domge95 Vow of Chastity (that said, our vow is more a vow of lasciviousness). The idea is to create an associative movement countering various unfortunate tendencies in digital art, and more importantly digital art festivals. And as an affront to the big daddy of all digital arts festival, we’re sending it into the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities category to see what they’ll do with it (we don’t expect much on that front, but who knows).

What does this have to do with code, you ask? Everything. Although ENIAROF is an inclusive project (mud wrestling anyone?), it emerged from artists working principly with code. A lot of us were inspired as youths from video games and 8-bit computers. While we might have since moved on to more elegant expressions, we found the need to create a messier, playful arena, with equally playful methodologies of production. What if CODE|ART had its own punk movement? ENIAROF tries to participate in that effort.

And it goes without saying that ENIAROF 0.2 will have a lot of Processing-based installations.

As rule 10 states that participating artists have to translate DOGMeNIAROF into their native toungue (if not yet already translated) and publish it online, here goes:

DOGMeNIAROF

[1] Although ENARIOF takes as its point of departure the term ‘Carnival’ (§), in no means must it take place within a carnival (especially contemporary carnivals!). To the contrary, it can in fact be seen as its re-appropriation (détournement).

[2] Installations must be built on-site, although materials may be prepared in advance. If a work has not been created for Eniarof, it must blend in with the rest. In the same vein, an Eniarof artist can introduce works of another artist, but he or she must then take charge of its integration.

[3] Each Eniarof participant must contribute to at least one of the aspects of preparation: communication, management, installation, dismantling, etc.

[4] Each participant can seek private financing/partnership for his or her attraction. A blank space will be reserved on all Eniarof communications for partners’ logos. (Artist-as-athlete?)

[5] Each participant will help in at least one other project, both to keep the atmosphere convivial, but also to take pride in another installation functioning if by chance one’s own installation is not working.

[6] All participants must avoid superfluous expenses. Do not attempt to hide traces of the work’s production within an encasement for which you do not have the means.

[7] Eniarof organizers can only be paid percentages of fees that in the end are destined to artists. All other assistants in the production of Eniarof cannot be paid any more than the participating artists are themselves paid. In the same sense, the barman, the guardian, the ticket-taker, … are not paid any better than the artists themselves.

[8] Each participant must take care that people within their entourage know about ENIAROF.

[9] The authors of attractions cannot be labeled during the event itself, however attribution can be communicated in the press releases.

[10] Every artist participating in Eniarof, and for which the Dogme has not yet been translated into his or her native language, must translate said Dogme (or have it translated) and publish this document (for example: on-line).

[11] Each participant must identify the principal idea and material needs of his or her attraction approximately three months in advance of the event.

[12] Each participant must possess an Eniarof t-shirt to promote ’da crew in swank cosmopolitan parties. The artist can make his or her own t-shirt, or obtain one of the printed t-shirts during the event.

[13] An Eniarof must be produced within at least an hour of an Emmaüs (†) center, or its equivalent (for raw materials).

[14] All materials borrowed from Emmaüs or its equivalent must be returned after the event, except in special pre-negotiated cases (for example, in case the object has to be dismantled or transformed).

[15] In order to reinforce the idea of a network of participants, former Eniarof participants are invited to participate in at least one new Eniarof. In this way, artists enact the links of the network.

[16] An Eniarof project must be an attempt at making an attraction. The attractiveness of the work will thus be its judge.

[17] The attractions should ‘spill-over’ into each other. Do not get obsessed with some pre-defined form. The overall spilling-over of one work into each other will create a backdrop for Eniarof (its social cohesion), the esthetics of an Eniarof (not necessarily the same for each iteration). If a neighboring artist spills over too much into your space you have several solutions: reroute his or her spill-over, steal their work from them (risking being robbed from in turn), build on top it, …

Translator’s notes:

• § ‘ENIAROF’ is ‘Foraine’ spelled backwards. An english equivalent might be ‘LAVINRAC’

• † Emmaüs is a non-profit network of centers redistributing goods to the poor. Similar institutions exist in many countries, for example the Goodwill network in the United States.

I might dissapear for a while, as I’m working again on The Game Machine. This is a cool interface I designed a few years back, but never really took the time to prepare it for the rest of the world. It’s been an on-again off-again project as I’ve never really had the opportunity to show it. This time I’ve gone out whole-hog and started integrating the system with some Gameboy Advance experiments I was working on last year. People should be able to make games for their Gameboy Advance and share them online.

• presentation: instruments + plateformes interactives
• speaker: Douglas Edric Stanley
• conference: Symposium Audio/Espaces/Réseaux
• organizers: Locus Sonus
• pdf: destanley.pdf

This is a recording of my presentation during the Symposium Audio/Espaces/Réseaux organized by Locus Sonus. In the accompagnying pdf file (destanley.pdf) you will find links to all of the films and interactive animations described during the talk. This talk is in French (why the hell am I writing this in English? I have no idea)

• Machine: ^3 ( a.k.a. Cubed, a.k.a. ³ )
• Concept+Development: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Play!

I’m pretty proud of the lastest machine I’ve added to the abstractmachine arsenal. It’s a musical sequencer integrated into a Rubik’s Cube®. You can play it online, or you can hire me to plug in a physicalised version, with real live Cubes generating the musical sequences. I’m trying to find someone to bite for the later, which might have already taken place, with an installation next summer for a music festival (I’ll keep you posted).

Like most of my interactive/musical instrument work, I’m working against the idea that a musician has to create music digitally — algorithmically — while sitting behind a laptop. The listeners should be given some hook to attach them to what the musician is doing: at least a videoprojection if we must generate behind a screen. What are they doing back there, playing iTunes? I’m also poking fun at the over-programmed nature of many of the current electronic tools that pass for high-tech instruments. For, trying to “program” a Rubik’s Cube, as anyone knows, is not an easy matter. So while one might be freed of the obscur interface (everyone understands a Rubik’s Cube), each permutation screws up permutations on the other faces, making the musical progression a true art to master.

There’s also a performance aspect to ³. Music is a live medium, and has been modular and algorithmic for centuries; the digital field should reflect this and allow for musicians to perform digital algorithms with their hands, just as they do with the guitar. Obviously, I’m speaking under the influence of Michel Waisvisz‘ Hands when I talk like this.

Basically, each face is an independant sequencer, with variable speeds (note: the sequencer was designed to keep each of the faces in sync, notably for electronic dance music). Each face of the cube uses a different instrument to play notes generated according to the colors on that face. The darkened square on each face indicates the currently playing note. The cubes are permutated by dragging one of the edge cubes and rotating it around one of the center axes. Each face is identified by its center square. Center squares never change color and are pratical for keeping track of activity. Dragging with the mouse from the center square rotates the entire cube.

³ loads with default instruments chosen from the MIDI instrument library. These synthesized instruments can be changed on each face by clicking on its current number and entering a new value between 0 and 127, followed by the enter key. The volume of each instrument/face can be adjusted independantly. The tempo for each face can be adjusted independantly. Each color represents a specific note to played by one of the six instruments/faces. Each face can have its own pitch value for each color.

Specific permutations can be memorized in a key, then recalled at any time by simply pressing that key on the keyboard. For example: by clicking on the on-screen ‘A’ button, the current permutations are recorded into the ‘A’ key; subsequently, whenever the ‘A’ key on your keyboard is pressed, the cubes immediately return to this memorized state. In the off-line version of ³, current key memorizations, as well as volume, tempo and note configurations, can be saved to disk. This allows a DJ to have a full set memorized, then work off that set. It’s cheating, I know (the whole point is it’s gotta be tough, right?), but you’ve gotta be pratical too.

As with Trane, ³ uses MIDI to generate the music on each face. Music can be generated by the computer using its internal synthesizer, or connected to an external MIDI synthesizer, sampler, or sound module. The MIDI output can also be rerouted within the computer via MIDI to other music software. This allows musicians and DJ’s to expand ³ and plug it into an infinite variety of electronic sound generators. Just open up the ³ window, and your midi devices should show up.

• Installations: Invaders! (pour manchots), Générique ENIAROF
• Concept+Design: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Générique icons: Pierre-Erick Lefebvre
• Exhibition: ENIAROF Video Arcade
• Website: ENIAROF

I found the time to build two installations for the ENIAROF Video Arcade.

The first is a reprise of my 2001 Invaders! program that I made subsequent to the World Center Crash. This is the Space Invaders that I projected onto buildings and let people fight back with 1000 points of light (or whatever flashlights they had lying around). In this edition, people put their feet in the right spot and defend the world from those nasty Invaders by shooting with their fingers in the air. It’s sort of like air guitar, but instead its air gun or air tank. You just point and shoot with your finger and the overhead surveillance system figures out where to shoot. It’s pretty wacky. Pretty quickly the public figured out that pretty much any part of their body could shoot: arms, head, butt, knee, foot, elbow. Umbrellas and other things were also apparently brought in for the effort, but I missed that.

The second installation was on a Gameboy Advance where I created a little “Générique” (credits) for the ENIAROF Video Arcade. It lists all the contributors to the arcade:

If you feel like it, you can actually download this program from the PLAY+MOBILE Website and play with it on your Gameboy Advance. I’ve also included source code so you can see what my code looks like when I slap it together in a couple of hours.

All the icons were created by Pierre-Erick, because he makes better icons than me.

I’ve been working on an interface to easily connection up Director and the Gameboy Advance, allowing the GBA to act as a joystick to a Director interface, as well as to transfer data between the two entitites. This would allow the GBA to send/grab data online, particularly for an attempt I’m making of adapting the Abstract Machine Game designer for the Gameboy. So far I’ve got Director talking to the Gameboy Advance and sending data back and forth. But my protocol is a little buggy and I sometimes (in particular instances) don’t perfectly map activity on the Gameboy from within Director. I think it’s the way I set up my bitmasks that screwed me up, I’m going to have to start all over, I think.

I’ve got far more information on this over at the PLAY+MOBILE website, although it’s in French (sorry!). But there are more links for you to work off of. I’ve been using an FTDI chip which allows me to plug the Gameboy Advance directly into the USB port of and Mac or PC. I could also plug into Linux, but since Director doesn’t run on Linux, it’s sort of a moot point for me right now.