abstractmachine

• Workshop: A+V = Algorithmes+Visualistes
• Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: Immédiat, Geneva
• Date: December 12-14, 2007

After a very pleasant meeting with the professors and students of design in Marseille last friday, I’ll now be traveling back to see my friends in Geneva at the art & design school where I’ll run another three-day workshop. So far, we don’t know exactly where it’s going to go — as always I like to keep it open — but we have decided to work from the perspective of visualist performance. So that will probably mean making visual algorithms that relate to live sound input. I’ll see how far we can push that purely technical configuration, and will probably construct some temporary concept to give us a more theoretical framework to work from.

You can see the work we did at the last two workshops in the design section of the school : Ooo and Play!. Those went very well, but apparently the school has changed quite a bit, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this new melding of the art & design schools is coming along.

I love Switzerland (and the Swiss). They have this wonderful speed at which they work — a speed that most French find maddening, because the tempo is just a tiny notch beneath their own.

My favorite Swiss moment was on my way to my first day of teaching at the design school. I was nearby, but couldn’t find the street. I stopped into a local shop and asked for directions. « Hmmm. Je crois la connaître, regardons… » the fellow said, and pulled out a map. He then proceeded to first unfold the map, and then to my amazement fold it up again, only folding it in a very specific way such that he was able to show me the precise position of my target.

The idea is very simple, and almost identical to any other map you might know. In any old dopey map you have letters (A-Z) on the vertical sides of the map, and numbers (1-666) along the horizontal sides. The problem is that you have to hold the map open with two hands, and then use the fingers of your other two hands (or your feet, I suppose) to follow those coordinates in a straight line until you end up crossing at the street you want. But the Swiss are obsessive with the little details, and in such a way that probably explains why most French people find them quaint. The Swiss have letters on the sides of their maps too, only the numbers are printed on the back of their maps. Get it? You fold the map at the letter indicated in the street index, and this lines up the bottom backside of your map precisely at the horizontal position you’re interested in. Then you follow that edge’s numbering system horizontally and bingo, you’ve got your street.

So first you have to imagine that the A-Z number does not give you the row you’re interested in, it gives you the fold you’re interested in, in order to line up the bottom of the map and your street. Very clever, that. Too bad I can’t find any pictures on the Internet to show you what I’m talking about. I’ll have to bring one back with me.

Oh, and did I mention that the typography on that map was to die for?

I’m in the middle of the second of two busy weeks. Last week France Cadet organized an excellent list of speakers for De l’objet de laboratoire au sujet social, and this week we’re working with Christian Graff whom she invited for a week-long workshop on electric fish. Régine Débatty has been posting her notes on we-make-money-not-art over the last few days and should give you a good idea of the highlights of last week (cf. Jens Hauser, Eduardo Kac). We’re only two days into the week-long workshop, so I can’t tell you much about it, but we’ve been working with Mormyridae, using an interface to listen into their rhythmic Electroreception. If you read my post a few months back on Echolocation you should see the interest this workshop had for us.

But the most exciting part for me has been over the last hour based on discussions we began yesterday with Christian and the members of Plot who are along for the ride (cf. « Mormyre » at Plotsème). As it turns out, all of the plot-ian concepts (as we call them here) from last year (« imprévu », « aléatoire », « lenteur », etc.) are perfectly aligned with a lot of the day-to-day theoretical discoveries of Christian’s research; and the conclusions and models he currently works with are quite brilliant for us and have just opened up some new territories. And on the question of physicalization, which I am working with more specifically through this blog and my thesis research, I’m equally seeing stars with everything Christian is showing us from his research — especially from the theoretical models he’s constructed only recently.

The basic question is randomness in relation to patterned activity, and what Christian calls « n’importe quoi ». We just spent ten minutes talking about the translation of « n’importe quoi » which he translated to « nonsense! » (I suggested he add the imperative to make it work), and which I prefer to translate as « WTF », « What the fuck »; hence creating a nice corollary with « n’importe comment » which would translate pretty well to « just fuck around » (another term we use a lot in the atelier). Christian’s problem is the biological as well as ethological study of electric fish, and therefore a question of behavior, environment and communication through the perspective of evolution (predation, reproduction, etc). In relation to communication (and keeping in mind all the other factors), the desire would be to see the mormyridae as great communicators, as well as electrolocators. But as it turns out, these fish use their significant cerebral power not to communicate with one another, but instead to create complex random patterns that allow them not only to avoid communicating with one another (i.e. recognition for the sole purpose of distinction) but also to act as camouflage within the complex riverbed for predators that are equally receptive to their electrical pulses. They generate amazingly irregular patterns, and as Christian has just suggested, « irregularity requires significant cerebral activity ». So where the desire would have originally been to see their significant brain size (in relation to their body) as a hint of great communicative abilities (think dolphins), this might turn out to be pure anthropomorphism and instead could lead us in the opposite direction: rendering the mormyr’s signal indistinguishable from the complex rhythms of the riverbed.

As Jean Cristofol has just reminded us, this takes us directly back to the theories of information. Indeed, the calculations Christian uses are precisely those of entropy.

The hilarious idea then becomes number generation via biological phenomena, similar to what I’ve spoken about in the past (cf. Quantum Randomizer, Snowy Tree Cricket, etc). This is actually already a reality in the LOEIL laboratory where we’re working: Jean-Pierre Mandon hacked a Linksys router into a Linux-server that sends the Mormyr rhythms to us over UDP. Then Guillaume Stagnaro used the Hypermedia UDP Library Stéphane Cousot and I built last year to grab these UDP feeds through Processing and by the end of the first day we had this ridiculous little sketch (cf. Happy Code Farm) animating a silly little fish using the data feed. The idea is to make this a permanent feed (data and audio) which could then be fed into the Locus Sonus streams. So basically we’ve built something equivalent to what I suggested was possible a few months back concerning the Snowy Tree Cricket.

A final note — more of a footnote for future discussions: Jean Cristofol has been using the concept of an expanded body, seeing the entire electrical field in relation to proprioception, which is not to be understood in the Macluhan sense of an extended nervous system through technology. For example, Christian used the term « transparency » to describe the fish’s ability to see internal organs thanks to the electrical spatialization, and the entire space analyzed by the electrolocation as transparent.

My colleague France Cadet has organized an excellent lineup for a week of talks beginning tomorrow at the Aix-en-Provence Art School and ending Thursday at Seconde Nature. It is entitled De l’objet de laboratoire au sujet social, which roughly translates as « From the Laboratory Object to the Social Subject ». In other words, the school will finally be returning to themes introduced by Louis Bec over twenty years ago when it instigated its art & technology program.

The speakers are Régine Debatty, Jean Cristofol, Jens Hauser, Beatriz Da Costa, France Cadet, Dominque Lestel, Eduardo Kac, Claude Gudin.

On Friday, we will meet and begin discussing with Christian Graff about his workshop on electric fish, to be held throughout the following week. This workshop was also organized by France Cadet, but she has invited plot to participate, so I will be at the school throughout next week as well.

Here is the complete list of speakers/subjects (in French).

Lundi 5 Novembre

• 9H30: France Cadet. Présentation du déroulement de la semaine thématique et du stage Mormyrophone®
• 10H : Régine Debatty : “Future Body”. Sa présentation abordera le corps tel qu’on le modifie déjà depuis des siècles, la manière dont les nano et biotech pourraient nous permettre d’aller encore plus loin (sera-t-on toujours des être humain? des uper humains? etc.) et les conséquences socio, cultu et éthiques de ce futur plutôt proche. avec exemples de travaux d’artistes et designers commentant le sujet.
• 14H : “Mon oncle d’Amérique”. Film d’Alain Resnais (1980). Le professeur Laborit part de l’exemple de trois destinées pour illustrer ses théories scientifiques sur le comportement humain.
• 16H : Jean Cristofol : “Comportement, code et contrôle”
• 17H30 : Radio Grenouille. Interviews et enregistrements pour diffusions ultérieures

Mardi 6 Novembre

• 10H : Jens Hauser. “Disembodied Cuisine“. Installation documentaire & Explication performative relatives aux steaks de grenouille du Tissue Culture & Art Project. Deux personnes, portent une blouse de laborantin, avec une installation sur une table à mis chemin entre la cuisine et le labo. Elles cuisinnte de la grenouille suivant la recette végétarienne de Peter Singer. La grenouille est censée être du steak de grenouille produit en labo et cultivé en boite de Pétri en référence au travail du groupe d’artistes australiens The Tissue Culture & Art Project. Le public pénètre donc dans cet espace et une discussion avec Jens Hauser s’engage et il commence à évoquer des textes qui ont été publiés à ce sujet, il fait référence à des articles de presse etc… pour aboutir à ses réflexions personnelles et autres préoccupations éthiques et philosophiques. La conférence s’installe donc comme ceci sous une forme moins traditionnelle et un peu plus déroutante et séduisante.
• 14H30 : Jens Hauser. “Sk-Interfaces“. Présentation de l’exposition dont Jens Hauser est le curator à l’occasion de la Capitale Culturelle Européenne 2008, Liverpool
• 17H30 : Beatriz Da Costa & Douglas Edric Stanley. Vidéo-conférence.
• 17H30 : Radio Grenouille. Interviews et enregistrements pour diffusions ultérieures

Mercredi 7 Novembre

• 9H30 : France Cadet. Présentation de son travail autour des robots chiens, de la résidence au BRL (Bristol robotics Lab), et des robots inspirés du vivant qui y sont développés (Ecobot I, II et III, robots qui mangent du sucre, des fruits avariés ou des mouches).
• Bristol Robotics Lab
• Bristol Robotics Lab
• 11H : “Fast, Cheap and out of control“. Documentaire d’Errol Morris (1997). Ce documentaire suit quatre personnages excentriques qui éprouvent une passion pour les animaux ou leurs représentations symboliques : un roboticien du MIT (Rodney Brooks), un scientifique spécialiste des rats-taupes, un dresseur d’animaux sauvages de cirque et un jardinier topiaire qui taille d’immenses animaux dans des buissons.
• 14 H : Dominque Lestel: “Enjeux des convergences homme/animal/machine au 21e siècle”
• 17H30 : Radio Grenouille. Interviews et enregistrements pour diffusions ultérieures

Jeudi 8 Novembre

• 9H00 : Navette Eole d’Art à Fondation Vasarely
• 9H30 : Eduardo Kac. Présentation de son travail + future expo & publication : à définir.
• 14H30 : Navette Eole d’Art à Fondation Vasarely
• 15H : Claude Gudin : Présentation rapide de son parcours et de ses recherches
• 15H30 : Table Ronde autour du travail d’Eduardo Kac; Participants : Eduardo Kac, Claude Gudin, Dominque Lestel; Modérateur: Jean Cristofol
• 17H30 : Radio Grenouille. Interviews et enregistrements pour diffusions ultérieures

Vendredi 9 Novembre

• 9H : Christian Graff. Stage Momyrophone® Présentation et début du stage Momyrophone®. Avec la participation de France Cadet et Jean-Pierre Mandon. Ce stage se propose d’Interfacer des signaux de poissons à faibles décharges électriques : les Mormyres.
• 14H : suite stage Momyrophone®
• 17H30 : Radio Grenouille. Interviews et enregistrements pour diffusions ultérieures

Semaines thématiques

Trois semaines thématiques de culture générale sont organisées chaque année à l’Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-provence.

Il ne s’agit pas de colloques qui prétendraient faire le point de l’actualité sur une question, réunir des meilleurs spécialistes, etc.. , mais d’une série d’interventions destinées à soulever le débat, croiser des points de vue, permettre un moment d’information et d’échanges (que nous souhaiterions les plus libres possible) autour d’une question.

Ces semaines sont en général conçues en liaison avec des activités pédagogiques initiées dans l’école, comme un contre point, un moment d’élargissement d’une réflexion, un moment de rencontre aussi.

Elle ne sont donc pas seulement destinées aux étudiants qui participent à ces activités, ou qui sont particulièrement concernés par les questions abordées, mais à tous les étudiants, de la première à la cinquième année, comme un lieu permettant l’élargissement à tous de leurs expériences et de leurs préoccupations.

• Visiting professor: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Dates: 16 April – 20 April 2007
• Conference: To be announced

On Friday I’ll be flying to Chicago where I’ll be teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as part of our Transatlab between Chicago, Nice and Aix-en-Provence. I’ll be rebuilding my hypertable there, and if I have time I’ll show the students how to do FTIR tracking, as well as object tracking with ReacTIVision (using Processing, PureData, etc).

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After Chicago, I’ll fly to Montréal for two days where I have been invited by Jean-François Renaud to visit the University of Montréal à Québec and more specifically the École des médias. I’ll be in Montréal from the afternoon of the April 24th to noon April 26th. If you want to meet, show me work, or know of anything interesting going on, let me know.

• workshop: livecode
• artist : Douglas Edric Stanley
• organizer : Jeff Guess
• location : Le Quai, Mulhouse, France
• participants : Benjamin Balzer, Jonathan Fleith, Charly Murté, Olivier Munsch, Julien Pauthier, Julia Rychewaert

Here are pictures + video from the workshop I ran at Le Quai, a school of art and design in Mulhouse, France. The workshop was organized by Jeff Guess. I am still waiting for some more documentation from the participants themselves, but its already been several weeks and I wanted to at least get this documentation online.

Most of the images were taken during our 4-hour livecoding performance for Tranche de Quai on the evening of March 1st.

Although it isn’t clear from the images, we pasted together a strange livecode system which was more like live parametering using osc for the declaration and attribution of variables and code in a program as it ran. The graphical coding environment was designed by Ben and myself, based on some very cool experiments Ben did with typography (working with design students is always fun for a typography-nerd like me). Into this networked system, we fed the film PI, which was used for raw sound and image data and then spit out as a re-worked video feed. Around this system Julia and I installed three video projectors into a small gallery space which we occupied throughout the evening with various code permutations. The projectors displayed the film, the re-processed film, and a livecoding window.

The original plan was to do real livecoding, but unfortunately this was just too tight on the schedule we had to work with. Also, I wanted to leave the students with a good knowledge of what is possible with Processing, as they will need it in the rest of their studies. That said, Processing really isn’t all that great for coding during runtime. There are scripting hacks out there for Processing, but they weren’t really fast enough and are incredibly wonky when you want to work in 3d. Basically you have to force the Applet to go into 3d and then constantly force all the variables into float-type as the interpreter declares everything as doubles (if my memory serves me well). As a result, I was the only one to truly livecode during our performance, even using the slowness of the interpreter to my advantage. You can see the results in still images (below) and clips of that section of the performance are also in the video (above). Basically I tried to create a movieplayer that would constantly fall astray of the framerate of the incoming video. But aside from my 45 minute performance, all the student code was osc based manipulation of variables and loops.

The workshop was actually very short: 3 days to learn everything, 1 day to prepare and perform, and 1 day for wrap-up/critique. Thankfully, Jeff and Julien are already very accomplished coders and were able to fill in the gaps. I am actually very encouraged by Jeff’s teaching effort. He’s a real pro and it’s nice to know that in France I finally have someone from another school I can collaborate closely with. But that’s also quite a telling statement because Jeff is originally from the other side of the pond. Like me.

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• Workshop: Livecode
• Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: [École supérieure d’art](Livecode, Mulhouse
• Date: February 26 – March 2, 2007
• Public performance: March 1st, 2006. Time to-be-announced

When I get back from California, I’ll have a short week writing at home, and then it’s back off to yet another workshop. I had already planned this workshop quite some time ago with Jeff Guess, so I couldn’t put it off any longer. It should be fun. We are going to explore some of the ideas brandished about by the livecoding movement (?), or, uhhh, style (?), ummm, tendancy (?), errrr method (?). We’ll be using Processing, not because it’s the best environment for livecoding (although it’s possible) but because I always figure that workshops should also give its participants some tools they can walk away with. At least the students will have some basic notions, and since most of the participants will have already been working with Jeff in Flash-coding, I figured Processing would be a nice complement to their arsenal.

There will be a public performance on Thursday evening March 1st, so we will be preparing for that from day one. My current idea — although this might change — will be to tag-team livecode in competition with a film (livecode vs. film), probably something cheesy like Wargames, although I might find something better for us to battle before then because that film is just a little bit too litteral for my tastes. Maybe Scanners? Any ideas?

Here’s the announcement (en français) of the Workshop:

• Douglas Edric Stanley
• «Livecode»
• Enseignant référent : Jeff Guess
• du lundi 26 février au vendredi 2 mars 2007
• Etudiants concernés : Design graphique, semestre 6

Eloigné de l’Action Painting et du Performance Art, le Livecode réintroduit pourtant l’action, la performance et le corps dans ce que la création numérique a de plus cérébral : la programmation informatique. Lier la difficulté à programmer un ordinateur et l’exigence de produire in situ font coexister deux vecteurs opposés que nous appelons le Livecode.

Le Livecode naît dans la reconnaissance que les performances numériques sont plutôt obscures pour ceux qui doivent regarder un performeur derrière son ordinateur sur scène. Pourquoi ne pas montrer ce que fait ce personnage étrange sur sa machine ? Et puisqu’il s’agit forcément de la manipulation de programmes, pourquoi ne pas voir ce performeur fabriquer, ligne par ligne, l’ensemble de son programme devant un public ?

Ce workshop tranchera dans le débat sur la posture à adopter face à la machine. Assis ou debout, peu importe, pourvu que nous fabriquions quelque chose. Ouvrons les machines, ouvrons les environnements de programmation et regardons tout simplement ce qu’on peut produire avec. Le Livecode nous permet de se positionner avec une posture pragmatique mais décalée – une posture drôle, absurde, tout en restant engagé avec ce que la machine produit de contraignant et de libre.

Dans ce workshop, nous explorerons principalement l’environnement de programmation Processing (cf. http://www.processing.org – une plate-forme open-source et gratuite, conçue pour et par des artistes/programmeurs avec une philosophie pédagogique claire et évolutive. Les participants au workshop ne doivent pas avoir de connaissances particulières mais doivent venir avec le moins d’a priori sur la programmation et ses «utilités» artistiques.

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

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

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

Videos from the arcade:

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

Images from the Flickr pool:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…and this…

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

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

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

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

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

Final quick post before the workshop tomorrow… um, crap, look at the time… that would be today. You can find a simple tutorial en français here on how to configure Arduino and Wiring. More examples will follow, of course.

processing[11] = “Arduino|Wiring” ;

Pour ceux qui seront au cours demain (ou ceux qui veulent suivre en ligne), voici une petite introduction rapide aux cartes Arduino et Wiring. Plus de cours à suivre, comme d’habitude.

Short post for all those who are getting ready (like me) for the ENIAROF Video Arcade workshop which starts tomorrow : I’ve just added a class on how to register noise in Processing and thereby enabling yelling at your computer: processing[10] = “Chanter|Gueuler” ;. This can come in very handy when making video games.

Another article should come later (this evening) on the basics of using Arduino/Wiring with Processing.

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.

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]

• Workshop: Image
• Organisation: Douglas Edric Stanley, Pavel Smetana, Ricardo Garcia
• Invited artist: Robert Praxmarer
• 3d specialist: Romain Raffin
• Participants: Yannick Aïvayan, Fabien Artal, Sylvain Boutroue, Raphaël de Stael, Nicolas Moncasi, Marie Noël, Julien Pauthier, Bastien Vacherand
• Location: L’école supérieur d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• Date: 27 February – 3 March 2006
• Website: Atelier Hypermedia, Atelier 3d

We have just completed a week-long workshop working with Processing and 3d image creation. It was an attempt bring together the 3d and Hypermédia ateliers at the Aix-en-Provence Art School, and as far as I could tell, was pretty successful.

The original idea was that image programming is no longer easily separated into neat fields such as 2d and 3d, raster and vector, etc. While these separations are still at work, and their logics fundamental to computer generated imagery, the tools, environements, and practices tend to mix it all up in the end. As well, many signs coming from the 3d world point to an image convergence, or should I say a hybrid image — in which 2d logics are at play within the 3d image, and generate its volumes, textures, contours. Ever since we dived head first into Processing a few months back, what was previously just an hypothesis has become a subsequent realty — at least to our standards — hence the need for a workshop to explore where we can go with it.

As it turns out, we didn’t fully explore the hybrid nature of generating 3d images using vector/raster styles/logics, but we did discover a lot about 3d, and it is now more or less an acquired tool in the atelier. None of the images were fantastically pretty either, but we did avoid the typical Tron aesthetic that still seems to reign in the 3d world. Video games are slowly moving away from that aesthetic, but there is still a lot of weening needed to rip us out of Brunelleschi perspective, and I think we all need to do a lot more work to force 3d modelling into the sophistication of say, any typical hip Illustrator or Flash design. Death to realism! Long live the new flesh!

After a brief intro (yes, I read through the OpenGL Super Bible, yes I attempted a short resumé), we began with the Pushpop Code examples I posted here a few weeks back, and started tweaking it to turn it into messy 3d soup.

My collegue from the Atelier 3d, Pavel Smetana, also brought in Robert Praxmarer, a Future Lab researcher and Processing-proficient lecturer in the Linz University of Art Interface Culture program. He is also currently in residence at Pavel’s CIANT lab in Prague. Once he had settled in, he proposed this 3d Grid Processing Sketch, using the traditional image of Lena as a starting point. Most of the participants used this source code as a starting point for their code experiments.

Wednesday, Romain Raffin joined us with a series of demonstrations and simple code snippets of his own.

Romain is a real-time rendering specialist working outside of the art world, in fact he generally renders for the French Army and Aeronautics industry. I’m usually skeptical of engineers meddling with art coding experiments — I’ve seen the “art meets science” slogan meet reality, it’s usually a funding-inspired hoax — but Romain was totally cool and guided us with a light touch. He also went back over the theory behind matrix transformations, something I hadn’t really explored enough with the students during the first semester. Those that didn’t get it, get it now. He also has a helpful PDF document on building your own Bezier Trajectories and other interpolation code. It think the basic interpolation formula — I = A(1-t) + B(t) — is permanently burned into my brain.

You can download several of his demo Processing sketches over at our Happy Code Farm.

The workshop was also a good excuse to introduce the students to the Procedural vs. Object-Oriented debate sparked by Toxi’s </Procrastination> post. We started with a pretty butterfly example, and built all sorts of object-oriented programs from there.

For example, Fabien Artal plugged in the Sonia Audio Library and made this field of reactive objects:

Considering that the students are often building complex models, each with its own transforms and heirarchies, and often building hundreds of them — it seemed time to better enforce Object-Oriented philosophy in our code. It took a while, and I still haven’t found the time to build a decent course on Object-Oriented programming (let alone a course on arrays!), but everyone took to objects pretty well. Next year I’ll have to be more serious about this subject.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in old skool BASIC-style procedural fiddling around, but indeed you really need Object logic when you’re building complex projects. Although, I do have to say that with Director we never really had that problem because some basic Object-Oriented principles are built into the interface itself, and allow you to program like a sloppy pig (even by hand), all the while building kick-ass monster projects. You just can’t do that in Processing. It’s difficult to scale. So I’m starting to see something of Toxi’s argument : there might indeed be something missing in the Processing environment, at least in this arena.

One of the nice suprises was having an outside student, Julien Pauthier, join us from Mulhouse where he studies with Jeff Guess. Jeff has been teaching code for a while and we met up recently to discuss expanding the code|art network, building collective workshops, sharing teachers+students, and exchanging code online. I have always made it a point of inviting students from other schools to participate in my workshops, whether in Aix-en-Provence or elsewhere. I also try to bring a few Aix students with me to each workshop I teach elsewhere. This works very well and has built a nice network of people working in France. Perhaps it would be interesting to enlarge that network, and connect it up to other networks working throughout Europe. There would probably even be funding for such an initiative. Perhaps some people on Processing Blogs could chime in on this idea?

• Workshop: Objets orientés-objet (le cas de Hypertable)
• Artist: Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: Haute Ecole d’Arts Appliqués, Geneva
• Date: 18-21 May, 2005

I just finished a successful 4-day workshop at the Haute Ecole d’Arts Appliqués in Geneva. It’s the second workshop I’ve held there, and my third visit. As always, it was a great pleasure, and I love Geneva. We also got dragged to a few interresting spots in the evening.

The original proposal was to take bits of a research proposal (Objets orientés-objet) I had defended at the Aix-en-Provence School of Art that failed to get adequate funding. Finally, we decided to (suprise) build a hypertable. This allowed us to teach the students programming the first day, and then to experiment directly onto the hypertable the following three days, as all the development has previously been done and merely requires plugging into the system (it’s as easy as pie, actually easier given that I can’t cook). Actually we reserved the last day for finalisation and filming all the successful projects.

Along for the ride was the always brilliant Pierre-Erick Lefebvre who helped run the workshop. Ever since he has been my assistant in preparation for the exhibition Créer du sens à l’ère numérique we have been talking about finding other uses for the Hypertable. I wanted to give him the opportunity to finally experiment with it without me imposing anything on hum. I was secretly hoping he would do something musical with it, which he thankfully did. We improvised late into the evening on one particular proposition, very funky, very fun. We’ve now got an idea for a concert. More to come from our collaboration, then…

The following participants finished work on the Hypertable : Jana Korcjomkina, Baptiste Coulon, Pierre Rossel and Pierre-Erick Lefvbre. Here are a few photos that Anne-Laure Schneider (of collectif_fact) took on the last day. I also filmed all the projects, and we made a DVD-Video from my footage.

Of note: this Postgrade Nouveaux Médias of the HEAA where we held the workshop has actually just turned into the Postgrade Immédiat which will be run by the HEAA conjointly with the Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts. Some interesting people are involved, we’ll see how it turns out.

Remerciments: Daniel Pinkhas, Anne-Laure Schneider, Caroline Bernard, Pierre Rossel, Stéphane Pécaut

• Event: ENIAROF
• Organisation: Antonin Fourneau (Eniarof), Douglas Edric Stanley (video arcade)
• Video Arcade: Atelier Hypermedia (Antonin Fourneau, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre, Manuel Braun, Loïs Roussillon, Stéfan Piat, Douglas Edric Stanley)
• Assistance Technique Video Arcade: Sylvain Nicole
• Location: L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• Date: 18 + 19 March, 2005
• Website: ENIAROF
• Video: ENIAROF 0.1 Video

I’ve just come back from the first day of ENIAROF (fête “foraine”, i.e. carnaval, spelled backwards). Insane! You still have a day to play in the Video Arcade built by the Atelier Hypermedia. Or else you can enjoy the mudwrestling (“Royal Catch Club”), the fortune teller, Deletere‘s Video Puncher, Dardex‘s mouse-races, the mysterious Gastropod Man, the Karaoke bar, a man watching TF1 48h non-stop, the concerts, beer, sausauges, and much more. Come many, come all!

Update: For those that cannot come, there is a Eniarof television crew filming the entire event. We’ll find somewhere to place it after we’ve gotten some sleep. In the meantime, here are some pictures that Antonin Fourneau sent me of the event:

• Workshop: ENIAROF Video Arcade
• Organisation: Antonin Fourneau + Douglas Edric Stanley
• Participants: Antonin Fourneau, Pierre-Erick Lefebvre, Manuel Braun, Loïs Roussillon, Aurélien Boyer, Stéfan Piat, Douglas Edric Stanley
• Location: L’école supérieur d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• Date: 1-4, 7-11, 14-19 March 2005
• Website: ENIAROF website

We have been frantically building the Video Arcade for ENIAROF, which opens tomorrow (more later).

ENIAROF is a projet initiated by 5th-year student Antonin Fourneau, one of the more active participants of the Atelier Hypermedia. Although I was originally asked by my director to head the project, I secretly declined as I believe that students should be able to take on ambitious projects on their own, and find the political and economic means to autonomously bring them to fruition. So Antonin and I struck a deal: I would head the construction of the Video Arcade, and he would overlook the project as a whole. This would allow me to organize a workshop that would give institutional legitimacy to the project, while leaving the rest open-ended for the various parallel propositions that were bound to show up on their own. The deal has allowed me to concentrate with the students on question of video game aesthétics, a field we’ve been exploring since back in 1999 with Bernd Diemer and Esc. to Begin. This also allows me to not worry myself with the larger issues of ENIAROF that ultimately belong to Antonin’s initiative.

ENIAROF grew out Antonin’s mixed feelings about Villette Numérique 2004 where he collaborated as part of the FAN (Folies Area Network) project of Téléférique. We were discussing at the time whether it was possible to find other means of showing experimental digital creations, notably of the ilk we have been exploring in the Atelier Hypermedia for the past two years: video game “languages”, game console hacking, mobile experiments, critical embedded circuitry, “playable instruments”, and lo-fi & D.I.Y. computer culture. Contemporary art galleries have been almost impossible to penetrate with these experiments, and we’ve been getting tired of invitations uniquely to the media-hyped ghettos of digital arts festivals. Despite all these festivals, and despite all the media reports, there has been little critical, market and institutional acceptation of the emerging digital cultures. We are tolerated, that is all. Hence an untenable future, and a need for alternatives.

As Antonin has been interested the past few years with emerging network trends — blogs, Flash Mobs, the open-source movement — he decided to put these logics at work in a Fête Foraine (Carnaval) housed within an art school. He made an open call for proposals, created a non-profit, and started bringing in institutional (City of Aix-en-Provence, the Tourist board, The Art School, etc.) and commerical partners (Compagnie Emaüs, Quincaillerie Aixoise, etc).

This project as a whole was of great interrest for the Atelier Hypermedia, but ultimately there was one specific question we wanted to explore. If you’re building experimental video games, how should they be shown? How can you stradle the fence between gallery and carnaval, exhibit and play? Hence the ENIAROF Video Arcade was born. I don’t think we’ve relaly succeeded in answering the question, but at least the experiment has been interesting.

Many of the proposals are simply re-contextualisations of old-skool video games. Manuel built a large-scale FIRE! requiring two people to carry about a large sofa to bounce survivors into the ambulance, and I’ve ressurected my September 2001 Space Invaders emulator I built after the World Trade Crash and readapted it as a one-armed immersive game. Pierre-Erick, Antonin, Loïs and Stéfan have adapted several of their programs into traditional (well not really) video game cabinets. Many of the games require jumping around, screaming (Antonin’s “Pince Vocale”), or frantically beating a giant button in front of a tiny little screen while surrounded with booming distorted-guitar amplifiers (Pierre-Erick). Indeed it’s a pretty Rock n’ Roll atmosphere.

All the building materials were donated by the Quincaillerie Aixoise (a hardware store) and the French robin-hood recycling network Emaüs. As Emaüs is spread across all of France, Antonin’s idea was that they could be tapped-into to build ENIAROFs all across France, allowing for proposals emanating from any number of various local groups.

Antonin and I have been taking pictures of the construction process. I’ve included a few to give an idea of the working method. Ok, so the photos aren’t so great. But hey, we were busy!

• Exhibition: Jouable
• Location: ENSAD, Paris
• Date: 20 November – 4 December, 2004
• Website: Jouable

I don’t have any installations in this exhibit, per se, but I participated in the construction of some of the works during two workshops held in Paris (Big Brother Workshop) and Geneva (Play! Workshop) as part of the Jouable project. Check out the website for more information + videos of the works.