I was recently given a copy of this book on Processing by Liang TAN. This is great news as Liang was an invited instructor during the 2009-2010 academic year at the Atelier Hypermédia where he studied Processing (amongst other things) and participated in the Mur Communicant/CityMedia project. While I don’t (yet) read Chinese, I was able to more or less read the book by studying the code and gleaning information from various keywords ; it’s not an expert book, more of an overview of Processing and probably would be a decent introductory text for students starting out with the environment. At least it does get into Classes/objects near the end and has some nice sections about Arduino, libraries and so on.
We’re just at the halfway-point, writing a collective manual on Processing using the expertise of Adam Hyde and his Booksprint technique. This book is being written directly in French (no translations) so I’ll switch over now into that part of my psyche.
Actuellement nous sommes à mi-chemin sur notre manuel collectif sur Processing, écrit à huit mains en cinq jours, en utilisant la technique du Booksprint sur la plate-forme Floss Manuals. Ce livre est écrit directement en français. Il ne s’agit pas d’une traduction.
Le livre a été financé par l’Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie et l’équipe est composé de quelques français, un québécois, un suisse, un malien, un roumain et un hybride étrange (français ? américain ?) que je ne saurais pas décrire ;-)
Si vous voulez suivre l’évolution de nos travaux, vous pouvez nous rejoindre dans l’écriture ou au moins la correction via l’interface d’écriture. La base est là, quasiment tous les chapitres aussi, mais plein de détails restent. Il nous reste deux jours.
Sinon, venez nous voir à Mains d’oeuvres ce samedi après-midi et nous vous montrerons ce que nous avons réussi à pondre.
Si vous n’avez pas compris, les Floss Manuals sont des livres open-sources dont vous pouvez vous servir directement en ligne, sinon que vous pouvez imprimer, sinon commander sous forme de livre physique. Il existe même un lecteur iPad, on est donc officiellement chic.
As readers of this blog might have noticed, I participated a few months back in Anne Roquiny‘s WJ-S project at the Maison des métallos, Paris. For those that don’t know the system, WJ-S is a multiscreen networked performance apparatus, allowing for real-time mixing of the web, à la DJs and VJs, hence the moniker « WJ-S ». So while I spoke last may on subjects ranging from protocol politics to sleepy surfers, Isabelle Arvers and Anne Laforet clicked and mixed a visual tapestry on the WJ-S system for the parisian audience. Now that talk, along with some 40 other talks from various artists and intellectuals, has been compiled into an illustrated publication.
Here’s the English press release:
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WJ-SPOTS #1 15 years of artistic creation on the internet
WJ-SPOTS is a project that was conceived of and designed by media curator Anne Roquigny, in which artists, critics, thinkers, inventors, researchers, curators, organizers and producers of cultural events are invited to look back on 15 years of Internet history.
The interviews are conducted inside the WJ-S multi-screen environment www.wj-s.org, transformed for the occasion into a space for thought and investigation. Online browsing of a selection of emblematic websites, chosen by the speakers, take place simultaneously on 3 big screens. Real time surfing is like a magnified and augmented thought presentation, offering multiple of points of view while the participants answer a series of 5 questions.
The first WJ-SPOTS took place in Paris, on May 27th & 28th, 2009, from noon to midnight, and was programmed within the framework of two digital events : Futur en Seine and Les Immatérielles.
WJ-SPOTS#1 was a two-day opportunity to discover approximately 40 outstanding figures of the French Internet community and the online content (texts, sound, video, animations…) browsed and downloaded in real time by Isabelle Arvers and Anne Laforet, from the gigantic hard drive that is the web.
The participants commented and analyzed, from an artistic perspective, how the Internet has been progressively taken over as a space of artistic creation, from its beginning until now : online creation, software art, code art, ascii art, flash art, google art, generative art, interactive art, collaborative art, tactical media, locative media, telematic art, network performances, etc.
WJ-SPOTS #1 is the first edition of a series of events and publications that will be organized in 2010 and 2011, in partnership with international media and cultural organizations.
WJ-SPOTS plays on numerous levels of re/transmission and publication.
WJ-SPOTS is a public event where it is possible to interview online artistic creators and surf in real time their selection of Internet sites.
WJ-SPOTS makes it possible to see the live retransmission of the event on the Internet on the Selfworld site.
WJ-SPOTS makes each of the interviews available via video on demand, on the server of Digitalarti.
The installation as well as tomorrow’s lecture are my attempt at a response to Suzete’s invitation to present something around the subject of « computational instinct ». The subject is vast, and this piece is by no means to be considered my definitive response. But it has allowed me to work out a certain framework for thinking the subject of instinct, and from which I’ve come up with this proposition « no.1 » in what could easily be extended into a series.
While I suppose there are a lot of directions one could take the concept of « instinct », I actually decided to avoid the whole innate vs. aquired debate, and focus instead on the environmental conditions of behavior, in other words looking at existence not from the perspective of a subject (transcendental or otherwise) in conflict with its biological predispositions, but instead from the perspective of a being historically embedded in an environment; i.e. a question of « Umwelt » as a formative ingredient to embodiness. From this perspective, instinct is not some contrary force acting against us, but rather the residue of our environmental context that exposes itself through our behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, instinct could then be considered a context within which behavior takes place; it is the behavorial framework that reveals something about the nature of our consciousness and how this consciousness is shaped by our negotiations and inscription within the world.
Which leads me back to this first experiment which like all experiments is about exploring the limits of a concept. While the concept of Umwelt is highly cybernetic in its conception of stimulus and effectuation, I found it more interesting to approach the concept of Umwelt from a purely temporal perspective. So I asked the question: what is our temporal behavior? and its corrollary can we experience other temporal existences? And if indeed the answer to the latter is yes, is our experience of temporally divergent worlds limited to communication or can we also simulate such environments, through immersion or other means?
In « Bohlen’s Experiment No.1 », I have recreated a machine described only on paper in Philip K. Dick’s 1964 science fiction novel « Martian Time-Slip ». In the novel, Dick suggests that communication could be made with autistic children via temporal variation devices:
« There’s a new theory about autism, from Bergholzlei, in Switzerland [...] It assumes a derangement in the sense of time in the autistic individual so that the environment around him is so accelerated that he cannot cope with it. In fact, he is unable to perceive it properly, precisely as we would be if we faced a speeded-up television program, so that objects whizzed by so fast so as to be invisible, and sound was a gobbledygook, you know? Just extremely high-pitched mishmash. Now this new theory would place the autistic child in a closed chamber where he faced a screen on which filmed sequences were projected slowed down. Both sound and video slowed, at last so slowed that you and I would not be able to perceive motion or comprehend the human sounds as speech… » – Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip
The novel goes on to discuss an attempt to build such a device, but which ultimately fails for various reasons concerning the intrigue.
Obviously, a similar device has already been made for the image: it’s called « 24-hour Psycho » and « Five-Year Drive-by (The Searchers) », by Douglas Gordon. And stretching the image this way is fairly easy, at least from a technical point of view: just slow it down. But I got to thinking about the sound, which is continuous medium and not discontinuous like the film frame: how could we stretch the sound in a more consistent way while avoiding the chipmunk effect?
In my first attempt at creating Bohlen’s device (Bohlen being the character hired to actually build such a thing in Dick’s novel), I decided to create a purely audio communications device wherein one could communicate in real-time and yet to two divergent scales of real-time. You speak into a microphone, and out the other end your speech is stretched from anywhere to 1x to 100000x. You can adjust the speed with a dial.
Therefore, you co-exist in two temporal scales, and yet both, while temporally divergent, can still be considered real-time in the cybernetic sense; it is merely the biological rythm or scale of that real-time that has shifted. Indeed, as my colleague Jean Cristofol has argued within our various theoretical working groups (cf. « lenteur »), real-time is a temporal form, and not a measure of speed. s
Speed and feedback are in fact two very different temporal forms.
On the technical side of things, this piece is little more than a real-time adaptation of Nasca Octavian Paul’s Paul Stretch algorithm. Basically, it uses FFT to analyze the frequencies of the sound at any single point within the wafeform, and then scrubs through those frequencies indepedently of the temporal constraints of the incoming audio. The result is fully comprehensible speech, no chipmunk effect, and yet stretching on a scale which can go from seconds, to days, and even (if desired) years. As anyone who has heard 9 Beet Stretch knows, the result can be quite beautiful.
While there are some other questions I’m asking as well in this piece, notably the question of consciousness in relation to the speed of computation, I’ll discuss all that tomorrow. This talk will also be reproduced in a publication some time next year. I’ll also try to add some photos to this post once I’ve had a moment to return to the exhibition space with a camera.
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.
I’ll be travelling tomorrow to Poitiers for what looks like a very rich roster of speakers discussing… oh yes… the subject of interactivity. Cough.
Oh, and apparently Ségolène Royal will be giving an opening pep-talk (oui, oui, that Ségolène Royal), which probably has something to do with the fact that she is currently the president of Poitou-Charentes where the conference is being held. You might also have noticed that she is currently making a bid to for the leadership of the French Socialist Party, so I don’t know how much to bet on her appearance.
I haven’t completely finished my talk yet, but from what I have so far, it looks like I’ll be sticking with this resumé that I sent a few weeks ago to the organizers:
L’image du monstre
Il y a trois ans, lors d’un précédent colloque à l’ÉESI sur le cinéma et l’interactivité, j’ai argumenté pour une approche “hydraulique” de l’image en mouvement : une approche dynamique autour d’une image fluctuante qui prendrait en compte notamment la fluidification que les machines algorithmiques apportaient à l’image. C’était une hypothèse intéressante, mais qui n’osait pas aller jusqu’au bout. L’épine du problème était une insistance à maintenir notre relation nostalgique avec la trace photographique à l’intérieur de l’image, face à l’horizontalité des nouvelles formes de stockage comme les bases de données qui ont tendance à brouiller les figures qui s’y trouvent.
Depuis, mon optique s’est totalement transformée. L’objet n’est plus pour moi un simple jeu de re-juxtaposition permanente, il est devenu un jeu de mutation, avec des images-croissance qui poussent à partir de n’importe quelle extrémité de la « Chose ». Il se peut qu’il y ait encore des traces anciennes dans cette image, mais ces traces jouent un tout autre rôle, et nourrissent la bête tout autrement. Je vois désormais dans cette image nouvelle une forme de « monstruosité » qui pousse à l’intérieur des images, et descend jusque dans les entrailles du GPU lui-même, ne remontant à la surface de l’écran pixelisé que le temps d’un court affichage.
Accepter le monstre dans l’image, transforme notre approche de celle-ci, et transforme aussi ce qu’on entend par figure, mimesis, et enfin narration. Cela change également les champs d’exploration qui permettent de saisir plus fermement les phénomènes que je considère comme les plus pertinents pour ces transformations, à commencer par les jeux vidéo.
Here is the symposium’s valiant attempt at an English translation, which makes absolutely no sense to me, and I wrote the damn thing. The words are right, it’s just that the meaning got lost in there somewhere. Apparently, my French is hard to translate, or perhaps just plain hard to understand:
Three years ago, during a previous conference on cine-film and interactivity at the ÉESI, I put forward the outline for a “hydraulic” approach to image in motion: a dynamic approach hinged on the fluctuating image ,which, notably, could factorise the fluidising import that algorithmic engines have brought to the image. It was an interesting hypothesis, which was just not bold enough to go all the way. The bane of the problem being insistence on maintaining our nostalgic affinity with the photographic trace within the image, at the hands of the horizontality of the new storing configurations, like those involving data bases, which tend to scramble the figures present.
Since then my assessment has been turned around. I no longer view the object as just a game of constant re-juxtaposition; it has become play on mutation, with image-growth sprouting from just about any appendage of the “Thing”. It is just possible that old traces still linger in that image, now however, they play a completely different role and feed the beast with different fodder. In this novel image, from now on, I can see a form of “monstrousness” germinating within the image, and getting right down to the entrails of the GPU itself, coming up to the pixelized surface of the screen for only a brief moment of display.
By accepting the monster in the image our approach to it becomes transformed, thus transforming that which we understand as figure, mimesis and finally narration. It also changes fields of inquiry which sanction and capture phenomena more securely and which I consider as being the most relevant for these transformations, starting with video games.
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.
I just received Daniel Shiffman’s book Learning Processing, A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction. It’s great, and absolutely (finally!) a book I can recommend wholeheartedly for people wanting to learn how to program in Processing. As its’ name suggests, it’s a beginner’s book — so if you’re already clear about most of the basics you might want to try one of the other two books, although there are some excellent advanced chapters on integrating Java, using video and sound, as well as grabbing data off of the Internets.
I was one of the early-draft readers of this book, and was immediately struck by its tone: Daniel is obviously a teacher and clearly has some experience teaching programming to people who normally wouldn’t be inclined to program: creative types. The book starts right off with getting to work inside the environment and keeping it simple. I also think that Casey Reas‘ book is very good in this respect, as opposed to Ira Greenberg’s book which takes a little while before getting started. Now, there are some dangers to this approach, and Shiffman’s book also feels a bit too much like you’re following a fairly standard linear trade course: learn A, then B, then C, … That’s okay because the goal is to teach you everything-you-need-to-know and to keep you on track. But while it starts off quickly and gets right into the heart of things on page 1, it can get a little dull after a while because of that same linear structure. It is not as devoted as Greenberg’s book, for example, on exploring the visual possibilities of the software, although there is — of course — some of that. Also, the design of the book is a little ugly — Daniel, your book has the design of a “Java Programming” manual!. This is compared to Reas’ book which has a nice encyclopedic feel to it (it should be clear by now that I like horizontal texts) and allows for some jumping around. So this is really a classroom book, if anything, or at least reads like one, for a standard american-style course on Interaction Design.
There is one little detail that I absolutely love, and insisted he keep in the book despite some hestiation, precisely because it’s so unabashedly dopey: Zoog, Daniel’s Processing equivalent for the infamous “Hello World!”.
Zoog is totally lame, and totally cool. I love Zoog. I want a t-shirt.
I would definitely recommend it for a question I am asked quite often: teachers often write to me and ask what book they should read in order to prepare for a class on programming. If you’re teaching Processing, this is a good one to read from A-Z. If you know everything in there, as well as in the online supplements (I even think these should have been included in the book, cf. Learning Processing Tutorials), you pretty much have all the answers your students will undoubtedly throw at you in class. Again, this is obviously written by someone who has some classroom experience making real-world interactive installations and prototypes.
For my part, I’m still waiting for that crazy off the wall book of a totally different ilk made for what I think is Processing’s strength: its compactness and simplicity. So I guess I’ll just have to write that one myself (more on that later). Also, we really need an Arduino book now. Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe is great, but is not as good of a learn-the-basics book as any of the three main Processing books which are all three of them excellent for getting you started.
Last update 01/09/2008 (see below). See also my attempt at context.
Update (24/08) : If you haven’t heard, this piece has stirred quite a controvery. I’m keeping the comments open for people to opine in their own manner and leisure. If you are interested, there is also significant debate here and at many other sites commenting on the affair. I obviously have a lot of things to say, and while I’m tempted to try and correct some of the most exaggerated misconceptions, as many commentators have mentioned the damage has already been done, the responsibility is ultimately mine, and it is therefore up to others now to make up their own minds.
Next week, my old piece from September 2001 will yet again be recycled, only this time in a very large scale edition, with some significant updates, all in celebration of 30 years of Invaders falling from the skies. Invaders! will this time be a multiplayer affair, with improved tracking (optical flow, yada yada yada…), a high (and low) scores leader board, and a stronger tie-in to the historical narrative that originally inspired me to make this version in the first place.
For an idea of how the physical interaction works, check out this video from the Laboral Gameworld exhibition in 2007.
This is all taking place at the huge Games Convention taking place every year in Leipzig. This year Andreas Lange of the Computer Spiele Museum was nice enough to include me in the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders with my somewhat ambiguous juxtaposition of this mythical game and the historical events of September 11th. He has also included a selection of various artefacts of the “official” Space Invaders game which will accompagny my large-scale full-body form of engagement.
Here is the press release (read : not written by me), which for once gets it pretty much right :
Space Invaders is one of the biggest video game legends. When the game landed in arcades world-wide in 1978, it initiated a previously unknown boom. Shortly after the appearance of the blockbuster pictures “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the “Third Kind”, thanks to Space Invaders, millions of mostly young players could step in to save the world from the alien invaders with their joystick in hand.
Space Invaders became a legend and a global icon. It is a frequently quoted art motif and remains omnipresent in our daily life. It is still as fresh as ever. The exhibition “Space Invaders: Die Jubiläumsshow!” (Space Invaders: the Anniversary Show) would like to pay homage to this evergreen and create an experience from its historical and current facets.
In addition to a comprehensive documentation, an original Space Invaders machine naturally forms the centre of attraction. Everything is overshadowed by the interactive large installation “Invaders!” by the French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley.
The World Trade Center attacks mark a deep cut in our recent history that is still being processed. The French-American artist Douglas Edric Stanley has found an unusual – though obvious – metaphor with his work “Invaders!”, which is based on the 1978 arcade original. In his interactive large installation, the players must prevent the catastrophe by controlling the well- known cannon at the lower screen border with their bodies and firing it using arm movements. Like the original, this trial is ultimately unsuccessful, thus creating an articulated and critical commentary about the current war strategy. In this regard, Douglas Edric Stanley sees Space Invaders as “a social tale that can be related to historical tales without losing its poetic power” (D.E. Stanley).
update (20/08): Kotaku‘s had a very negative reaction to the piece, and their community seems pretty pissed off. I think there’s some confusion in there, as per usual, but you can head over to their website for more on the controversy (here and here) .
update (21/08): PC World’s Game On blog has a much more measured response to the Kotaku post. There are several other reports as well, including this slightly more accurate one from Fox News which tries to flesh out a few of the details discussed by Kotaku. NY Daily News has also apparently jumped into the fray, calling World Trade Center victims to get their response — which in my humble opinion is just as sleezy and facile as anything else I’m apparently being accused of. Ah, the slow descent of journalism into endless tautological news cycles. Count me out.
update (22/08). Here is the statement I made last night concerning the removal of Invaders! from the convention:
“After three days of a steady downward spiral in public discussion of the piece, I have just given my agreement to the organizers of the Leipzig Games Convention to simply turn off the installation Invaders! While I realize the dangerous precedent of allowing the lowest common denominator dictate what is and is not a valid form of expression, unfortunately the current tone has totally obfuscated the original aims of the piece. While I take full responsibility for the uncomfortable ambiguity of certain aspects of this work, it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy’s sake, and unfortunately, this is what the piece has now become. The American response to this work has been, frankly, immature, and lacking the sophistication and consideration that other parts of the world have so far shown the work. Contrary to previous reports, I am an American, and it saddens me that we as a people remain so profoundly unable to process this event outside of some obscure, but tacitly understood, criteria of purely anesthetized artistic representation. Due to these profound misunderstandings, I simply feel that from an artistic point of view, the work has lost the ability to have any valuable impact, poetic or otherwise. I have not been pressured by the Leipziger Messe, nor by the Computerspiele Museum in this decision — to the contrary, they have offered their support in defending the right of artists to speak freely, and in whatever context they may choose.”
update (01/09) : Some people continue to be under the impression that I created a game in which the goal is to bomb the World Trade Center. Herein lies the power of rumor, suggestion, and above all controversy. I made no such game. In Invaders!, you are very clearly defending the towers, on the side of America, and there is no option to play the role of the invaders. Any suggestion to the contrary is probably under the influence of one early report, in which the flames of the towers were the only thing that remained. This reporter did not understand that the work was interactive, and this inaccuracy was eventually corrected. If, from there, people are still offended, fine; and you are welcome to comment your objections here or on the many blogs that have been covering this story. But I found it quite telling when, yesterday, upon correcting someone poorly informed on this matter, this same person replied, “Then what is all the controversy about?” Indeed.
I’ve had a few requests recently, asking me to write about various subjects — gaming, contemporary art, code aesthetics, interfaces, and some other subjects I declined to write about, simply because I had nothing to say. Ethan Miller wrote me yesterday to let me know that at least one of these has finally been published, namely an article I wrote for Switch a few months back, in response to the subject of their (then) upcoming issue entitled “re-purposing”.
As usual, I didn’t really answer the implied subject — artists re-purposing technology for artistic use. Instead, I more or less proposed re-purposing as the definition of contemporary technology itself, and therefore a larger epistemological issue beyond mere aesthetic concerns. Anyway, it has what I hope are some clarifications on how I read programming within the larger framework of temporal machines, and something about its ontological(ly variable) nature.
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.
One of the questions I consistently have to field is « are there any good books to read if I want to learn Processing? ». My answer is usually, well, Casey Reas has a book coming out, as does Daniel Shiffman, and then there was some other book announced by Friends of Ed. Unfortunately none of them are out yet, but they will be soon… So Friends of Ed. is the first out of the gate apparently, and I know that Casey’s book has been finished for a few months. I also read a bit of Daniel’s book quite a while back and it too looked great, so I have feeling all three will be out in the next few weeks.
First, the good news: it’s a good book, written in a very clear style that I can comfortably recommend to my French students (oui, si vous arrivez à comprendre l’essentiel de ce blog, vous arriverez à comprendre ce livre). But even more important for me: it’s a big rugged book. It’s a learning book (as opposed to a reference book, such as Casey’s), so you might want to wait until it goes paperback, but as for us at the Atelier Hypermedia, we’ll be quite happy to have a big strong book to throw around. Especially when there are so many great recepies in there. We’ll be dog-earing many pages, meethinks. Chapter 11 on « Motion » is worth the price of admission alone: it gives you all the basics you need to know about making things move around using all the basic rules of gravity, collision, reflection, etc. And Chapter 13 is a fairly good introduction to d*3 that we will probably use as an introduction in the atelier. So all-in-all, it’s a good classroom book, which appears to be by design. You can easily teach around this book.
He also has a nice take on the basic « Hello World! » introduction to programming. Indeed, what is the equivalent of « Hello World! » in Processing? In electronics, that’s easy: a blinking LED. In 3D, tradition says that it’s a rotated cube. But in Processing? What’s the basic shape that says, hey, look, I too can draw shapes through code. Greenberg calls his version « Hello Earth! », and I like it:
Other good news: Ira Greenberg jumps right into object-oriented programming almost from the get-go. You learn about the environment and what buttons to push, you draw some lines, you draw some shapes and curves, and then you’re making objects. This might sound a little daunting, but it’s actually a necessary evil and the number-one mistake that I made in my currently whimpy on-line offering of Processing tutorials; a mistake I will promptly rectify before classes start in October. As we discovered this year, especially thanks to Pascal Chirol’s excellent diploma work, you can’t do anything interresting in Processing without a basic knowledge of objects.
That said, Greenberg’s actual use of objects in the book is a little thin. Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 each have a quick section near the end that gives some practical experience, but he rarely uses it in the rest of the examples that I explored. Although I have to admit that I didn’t read the book in it’s entirety, from my quick perusal it seemed to me that the examples don’t use objects enough. It would have been great to base pretty much everything you do after chapter 8 on object-oriented approaches. I find that what my students really need are real-world examples of not only how to use objects in programming, but also why you should use them and the general approach to using objects in your program. (Want to make a game? Start with the objects…) I know that’s a pretty tall order, one that an introduction to Processing might take a whole book to dispense, but I still find that it’s an important missing link for my students; i.e. one of those hurdles that once you get over it, everything seems to open up. But like I said, it’s rare to find an introduction to programming tutorial with so much use of object-oriented code (including my own), so I’m probably just being too picky.
Another complaint that I have is chapter 3, entitled « Code Grammar 101 ». It starts from good intentions: list all the syntax that will be used throughout the book, declaring variables, creating functions, loops, conditionals, conditional operators, relational operators, arrays, switches, ternary operators, while loops, do…while loops, … I hope you get my point: that’s an awful lot of stuff to learn before you actually do anything with the program! My method is exactly the opposite: open up the program, click here, click there, have fun, then go back and learn the basics; or even better yet, learn them while you’re having fun making stuff. Isn’t that what Processing was designed for anyway? I.e. getting started with a minimum of fuss?
Here’s my advice on how to read the book, and in fact my first assignment to my students that will be working with this book over the summer:
Open the book at Chapter 4 on page 59. Avoid the rest of the chapter…
Turn directly to Chapter 5 (page 144)
Read the rest of the book
There is also a nice annex at the end of the book giving some basic trigonomety, and a pretty damn good description of bit-level operations and why they can make your video analysis faster. I actually wish he would have explored this subject even more, but that’s okay, as I can take over from there, at least with those adventurous enough to make it out to Aix-en-Provence next semester.
Again on the positive side, there’s a good section on raster-image treatment, showing you all the basics of working with a photographic image. It even shows you how to export your results, instantly transforming you into an image-filter designer, à la Photoshop.
Strangely missing from this book are discussions of external libraries. This is normal I suppose, because you can’t really trust externals to stay put while a book is being published; one of the great things about having a stable release of Processing is that books can now comfortably be published without fear of unuseable code. Nevertheless, for my money Processing really takes off as an artistic tool when you’re outputting and inputting to and from various destinations and sources. We try to get to sound input, or video and PDF output almost from day one. The lack on an in-depth discussion of PDF export (in fact, I didn’t see any discussion of PDF, but I might be wrong) is actually very strange given the purely visual concentration of this book: all the examples are oriented to give you a basic understanding of how to draw stuff. If you’re drawing stuff, you probably want to print out to PDF at some point.
A nice follow up « expert » book might be how to take all this basic knowledge of drawing stuff and show how to plug it into everything else. Real World Processing, Processing vs. World, or whatever. Of course, this is the way we work at the Atelier Hypermedia already, and in fact how we intend to teach processing starting this October. Some of that material will be directly on-line, of course. How to make high resolution prints via PDF, importing real-time data on-the-fly from the Internets for a web-based visualizer, installing an interactive wall with a video projector and camera tracking, channeling Oscar Fischinger with the MovieMaker video exporter, creating a visualist set with live audio analysis, etc. Of course, that’s my approach, and maybe there’s a whole group of people out there that don’t want to know any of that and are perfectly happy drawing bouncy, spindly lines. And when it comes to drawing hundreds of wiggly, springy lines, this Processing book is perfectly competent, and even taught me a trick or two.
Thanks Ira! Thanks Friends of Ed.!
P.S. Note to students of the Atelier Hypermedia: don’t forget to download the files for the book which you will find in the on the editor’s website (link). Some of the code is pretty long, and not all that fun to input by hand. A lot of this code is cool, and is a pretty good sell for the book. The image below is a screenshot from one of the examples. The editors should have put up online applets of all this stuff, since it’s all based on basic Processing methods and therefore should all work within applets. But what do I know, I’m not a publisher.
Ok people, you can stop sending me emails about Microsoft Surface. I’ve seen it already. And as I mentioned in this interview and this one the experimentation phase of interactive surfaces is over. Everyone knows that Microsoft is the pretty much the last cog in the technology wheel. When they’ve figured it out, well that means that just about everyone else has already figured it out some time ago.
I love that historical timeline on the surface web page. NO REALLY EVERYONE, LOOK, WE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE THE IPHONE. NO, HEY, WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? IT’S TRUE! The funny thing about Microsoft is that they are still actually sincere after all these years. They just don’t get the joke. They really do think that they have invented all these technologies, only they just weren’t savvy enough to make people realize it. For example, to them, OS X’s interface is actually a rip-off of ideas they were already working on in Vista and not the other way around. Back in my little bubble world, we digital artists are always suffering from the same illness — it’s in fact our favorite sport (oh, I was doing that years ago) — but it’s even funnier to see one of the richest companies in the world fretting over their public image: gosh, if people only knew!
But kidding aside, this is a really good thing. I said in the above interviews that when Jeff Han’s solution was shown, it was officially over for surface innovation. I called them Hypertables, Hypersurfaces and Object Oriented Objects, MIT people called them Things That Think amongst other terms (and ages before me), and then before all that there was Bill Buxton and Myron Kruger. So none of this is new. But what we needed was a starting block, a sort of ok, fiddling’s over, time to use this stuff. Jeff solved the fundamental visual-gestural language, and all we had to do from there was to start using it.
I also should mention here what got cut out of the Fast Company interview, in response to the question « are hypertables the replacement for the keyboard/mouse combination? » My answer to that was « look at the Wii ». You cannot seperate the iPhone introduction from the introduction of the Wii controller. Both are looking to phsyicalize algorithms, make algorithms maleable physically, and as far as that goes, the field is still wide open. Keyboards and mice are still workable, so they probablly won’t die, no, beacause people will be writing things for a long time to come. Neither the Wii, nor the iPhone, to Surface, will help you write your blog. Maybe your video blog, but not your text blog.
Or maybe a million little things will complement the keyboard and mouse, or maybe just a half-dozen solutions will turn out to be modular enough to solve most of the things we will want to do. Or maybe Cronenberg is right, and it’ll be your body itself. But in my opinion 1) phyiscal objects are good for abstract thinking, and 2) no single object will be fully modular enough for all uses. There will not be one single system, although touch will indeed solve quite a few of the old ones. But whatever the case, the interfacing will require interfacing algorithmically. And when it comes to interacing algorithmically, nothing beats the Rubik’s Cube.
So now are finally seeing real-world hypersurfaces that we can work with. Personally I was expecting Apple to solve the commercialization problem first, and maybe they will. With that $5000+ tag, Surface still feels like vaporware. But I don’t think Microsoft will have any problems shipping at the end of the year as they predict. Trust me, this is very easy technology. For my installation at the Pompidou Center in 2004, for example, I solved my lighting problem with a 5€ bathroom lamp from theBHV down the street. Now, if I can make Hypertables with household appliances, Microsoft can probably commercialize the thing with more professional processes.*
I’m also intrigued that so many people are offering the same solution. That more or less solves the patent problem right there.
Also, Vista is running behind Surface, and while I think Vista is oh-so Mac 10.2 (which is still just a fancy NeXT machine), it’s ultimately great news that there’s a boring old operating system sitting under that coffeetable. Running Processing or Flash or vvvv or whatever on top of it shouldn’t be all that hard.
This is going to sound bad, but personally I’ve got about a five-year start on what works and what doesn’t in these touch-contexts, and plenty of ideas that have just been waiting for the technology to become a reality. But I’m also a little bored with it as well, so we’ll see if I invest a new round in this technology. Our crew has it’s work cut out for it whatever the case: neither Microsoft, nor Apple, nor Perceptive Pixel for that matter, have proposed any tangeable experience with this technology. So far, we’re just talking about « interfaces ». So artists still have a lot to offer in this field.
So thanks Microsoft. I guess I’m trying to say thanks for being so reassuringly tweed coat and making this technology feel like Daddy’s old jalopy…
A few weeks back, the cool French journalist Marie Lechner asked me to collect a list of interesting YouTube videos. I was originally going to do something more interresting than what I came up with, but I was busy travelling and so I quickly scraped together this fairly traditional list along with a there-goes-the-professor-again accompanying verbiage. Even if you don’t read French, the videos are fairly explicit: there’s insolent stuff, code stuff, remix stuff, political stuff, etc. Here’s the link: Playlist #1 par Douglas Edric Stanley. If you want a translation, Google will do it for you here: link.
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.
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?
Abstractmachine is currently the design special guest over at New Italian Blood. As I previously mentioned, it is a short-but-sweet portrait of what it is that I do over here at www.abstractmachine.net (link). As I probably won’t be posting much for the next couple weeks while I write my thesis, and since so many people have been visiting this site since the ZeroOne festival, might I suggest people head over there. Of course there is also a lot of information in the archives (see above), including stuff you can play online, and video documents of most of my work.
But what I really want to point out here is that — although it’s nice to be quoted in my hometown’s big paper (I’m still holding out for the Los Altos Town Crier) — the quote they attribute to me is not something that I would ever say, at least not with that wording. “What you need to know is that anything digital can connect to anything else that is digital,” what a load of crap. What you are reading there is what the journalist understood from what I said, and that’s a whole different can of worms. I’ve been interviewed by the press for enough years to know that they fudge things far more than any artist would ever dare to, all in the name of clarity. But in the process, they make some of us sound like idiots. Thanks for the publicity Joe (who’s actually a pretty nice guy, as these things usually go), but next time just record it, or leave it out, thankyouverymuch…
This is another quick post to link up the Italian design magazine New Italian Blood who have just invited me to present ten of my works. It will be featured on the front page starting next week, but you can already see the selection here: link. I was actually happy with the selection and how it looks on the site. It think it gives a good (and quick!) overview of my best work, so if you want a condensed version of the abstractmachine project, check it out.
Oh, one thing. Please don’t ask about the title of their magazine. I have no idea either. Just to make it clear though, I am not Italian, nor has anyone taken my blood on Italian soil.
Ok, so 8=8 has returned back from Nantes. Ooops! That was a mistake! Scopitone is one of those amateurist multimedia festivals I have been complaining about recently. Actually, the festival is broken into two, with the whimpy multimedia selection during the day coupled with a brilliant and adventerous musical lineup at night. So it’s basically one of the best French festivals for electronic music with one of the crappiest non-selections of multimedia art. I don’t know what went wrong, but after five years you either have it or you don’t. If this year is any indication, they definitely have it all wrong and need a serious reboot. In typical fashion, yet again all the multimedia artists got squashed in the planning by by the disproportionate focus on (big name) musical acts. And of course, in spite of the fact that 8=8 is a musical performance guess where we were stuck performing? Sigh
Despite extremely poor conditions, we actually rocked the house. Don’t just take my word for it. Yeasterday, Marie Lechner wrote on 8=8’s performance in Libération and seemed quite happy with us. You can read the original article here: Nantes bombardé d’électro. Here is an excerpt of the part about us:
“Mécaniques infernales. On aurait aimé voir dans le [Scopitone Soir] 8 = 8, un dispositif où sons et images sont générés simultanément par simple déplacement des mains au-dessus d’une table basse. Pour découvrir l’instrument audiovisuel imaginé par Douglas Edric Stanley, il fallait se rendre aux Ateliers et Chantiers de Nantes qui accueillent le Scopitone «jour» et son lot d’ateliers et d’installations interactives. Assis autour de cette hypertable, avec trois autres performeurs (TM, Nao, JankenPopp), ils activent des univers punkoïdes, entre Donkey-Kong distordu, match de foot abstrait, arc-en-ciel déviant et mécaniques infernales.”
As Marie mentions in her article, we would have been better served as simply one of the opening acts for the nighttime concerts (more on that later). 8=8 was designed for a concert setting, although off the main stage. It was not designed as an installation, we already know how to do that, thank you very much. Despite our protests, the festival director begged us to present 8=8 as a daytime installation + performance, claiming that there wasn’t really anywhere for 8=8 to perform in the evening setting. But once we actually got on-site we realized how much we had been screwed, as there were several places/times we would have fit in fine. A truly shameful lie, especially considering he was with me in Marseille when I — sucessfully, albeit with much difficulty — fought against the tendencies a previous music festival had of treating multimedia performances as nothing more than an entertaining sideshow.
To further add insult to injury, the sound system sucked — really sucked — as did the acoustics, whereas at the night setting the sound was f§@#&?! brilliant.
Want the real story? In reality — according to a local — there wasn’t enough peanut gallery material to amuse the public and justify public funding, so 8=8 got sacrificed as a pleasant curiosity for your afternoon stroll. It’s true, 8=8 is fun for the public, but if we wanted to design it as an installation we would have designed it very differently. Ho hum there we are yet again distracting the public with amusing gadgets you can fiddle with. We really have to stop this dangerous cycle, it’s making us look like idiots…
If I could make a public plea to Scopitone: do what you do best — music — and just drop the multimedia part all together. That, or be more honest with your artists. Slapping together a couple minor installations with little to no means, and even worse no curatorial vision, just gives digital arts a bad name. The scary part is that they are currently renovating a former warehouse to make room for a permanent cultural center dedicated to multimedia art. Yikes! They better get a serious artistic director, and quick. It would be even better if they found someone who has travelled beyond the infamous invisible wall that protected France from Chernobyl.
That said, the public was very enthusiastic, and 8=8 actually started feeling more and more like a real group. I think we could actually do something with this ragtag band. I had fun spending time with my fellow performers, but I know it’s a pleasant illusion, and that I’ll always be the old professor who will eventually have to be carted back into his study. In the end, we knew that we would have a good response, hence our willingness to bore the weight of shitty conditions: ultimately we do enjoy meeting cool people and playing our programs for/with them. And for that, at least, the trip was a success — cheers to all the enthusiastic people we met, by the way…
Here are some photos of that “Punkoid universe, between distorted Donkey Kong, abstract football, deviant rainbows and infernal machines,” Marie described so well. All the photos were taken by Thomas or else by some intoxicated stranger ressembling one of the members of 8=8.
