Since this is now a blog eat blog world, and I have been taking advantage these past few years of the platform that blogging offers me, I believe that I have at least some responsibility in taking seriously the many comments, especially from those within the gaming community, and obviously over at Kotaku where the response was the most varied and interesting. So here is an attempt at some context, for what its worth…

• “We do know, however, that the 8-bit tower jumpers and the negative score applied to each WTC tower to indicate damage aren’t going to sit well with, we’re thinking, everyone we know who doesn’t hate freedom.” - Michael McWhertor

Sadly, the work has been discussed, largely (but with some exceptions) based on this early report in which the journalist did not even play the game. For me at least, a video game is at some point always going to be about its gameplay. Ironically, the same journalist finally did play the game, and found some merit in it. But by then, the cat was out of the bag, and we had a media circus on our hands — at which point I simply shut the piece off, and turned off ongoing discussions with the many news outlets that wanted not to discuss the piece, but instead my reaction to the reaction, which again is not really my role. News cycles thankfully are short, and it is my impression that with Leipzig now over, we can all calm down a little and those interested can try again to discuss the game itself. But from the point I was attributed as “hating freedom” (on what merits, please?), the whole thing was basically Game Over as far as I’m concerned, and confirmed my original concern that a commercial games convention might not a viable venue for work of this sort. Somewhere in there, I naively figured that gamers, given all the controversies they have weathered over all these years, would have the sophistication to see in the gameplay itself something else than a simple black vs. white, for vs. against, you are with me vs. you are against me posture, or “message”. There is no real “message” in GTA, and hopefully there is no real “message” in my work, and certainly not that I hate freedom. I continue to believe that the game offers something far different than hatred in fact, and personally I always felt a certain sense of release at the end of each wave, just as in the original game. Just as I felt some very mixed emotions, difficult to neatly organize into “pro” or “contra”, when the whole “War on Terror” kicked in. Sure, there is something definitely ambiguous about defending the towers in a game, and some complex emotions that, indeed, might be a little too raw, or odd, for some, even in an 8-bit representation that is highly stylized and presents itself immediately as such. But whatever one decides in the end, I have heard many a cry within the gaming world that we need to take into account the internal logic of games, and that means actually understanding the mechanics of its gameplay, and respecting its figurative tropes. In this regard, it really surprised me that Kotaku would be the first ones to fall into this trap. I can understand in the case of Fox News and NY Daily News, but Kotaku?

• 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.” Press Release, Computerspiele Museum

This was the press release, made by the organizers of the exhibit, and never a direct quote by me. I should also point out that neither I, nor the organizers, claimed that this piece was “anti anything”. The curator who commissioned this piece called it a “critical commentary”. This is not really the way I would have phrased it, since I don’t believe art is in any way equivalent to commentary, but I don’t see any real problem in his statement either. I was perfectly fine with it, and as I said before “I approved this message”. But I think it important that we understand that the role of “critical” work is not to provide a specific message “against” anything, and I know for a fact that the organizers of the exhibition and I are on the same wavelength on this issue. “Critical”, is often used expediently to describe disapproval, but it is more effective when considered a form of discernment, distancing, or scrutinization. This should be sufficient to explain our willingness to defend the irony and ambiguity of the piece, and should have been an obvious flag that this was not a flippant piece merely seeking to shock. The events of September 11th were in many ways complex, and as I have stated before, a complex, i.e. the site of unprocessed events. This is perhaps the true meaning of the event, and why people are so upset over my rehashing it: perhaps September 11th is entirely un-processable, and that we wish it to remain so. This too is a valid point, and I have noted it.

• “[H]e made the original in 2001. What fucking point was there there? There was none. This guy is a jack-ass. There was no “War on Terror” when he made this piece of shit. He was just trying piss people off. And now he’s coming back and spouting off illogical bullshit that Art Aficionados and Critics will try to defend by creating a message that was never there.” - Ad-hominem at 01:50 PM on 08/20/08

It is absolutely true that there was no “War on Terror” when I originally made this piece. It is also true that this was a very different piece back then. In fact, on September 10th I was simply working on a mod that upon waking up the following day had taken on an eerily new significance. The whole connection happened almost as an accident.

On the first day of the exhibit, I made the following statement to AP: “I originally produced the work for my own needs, as a personal attempt to unravel what had become an ontological knot due to the many symbolic layers that had mixed themselves in with an extremely violent act.” I’m sure I’ve pissed off a people right there with my rhetoric, but I really do mean it quite literally: I had no idea at the time what to make of the whole damn thing, hence the ontological knot. To put it in a manner of speech for those in the forums: I just kept saying to myself what the f@#$ was that!?. On the one hand we had innocent citizens perishing in an extreme violence heretofore unseen in such a public form of witness, and yet the entire thing felt precisely choreographed for us, almost — gulp — sophisticated in its use of our media as a form of warfare. They was frikkin’ with us Americans on multiple levels, and using our own language to boot. They had obviously been watching our movies, and playing our games. At which point I started to realize (and I was not alone in this) that Al Qaeda had somehow tapped, quite intimately, into our collective projections of fear and destruction, and had invoked an often rehearsed metaphor of invaders descending from the sky. Twisted, indeed.

Since then, this whole event has evolved over time, as has this piece, as the cultural discourse on the World Trade attacks shifted. We have seen many different cycles in this process, and many attempts to re-appropriate the symbols and language used to describe the event itself. Meanwhile, we as Americans have resorted to tying ourselves ever tighter to the icon of the terrorist’s explosive-laden belt. At the symbolic level of political theater, it is as if we have decided that in order to give truth to our military resolve, we somehow had to integrate the figure of the terrorist as our figurehead. A strange emblem, indeed.

For my part, I have lived through a very different experience of a city under siege by terrorists, held hostage by random acts of extreme violence that paralyzed us for months, and yes there was gruesome dismemberment and death involved. I am sure those wishing my death will regret to learn that I and members of my family were to have been precisely at the time and location where one of the dismantled bombs was set to go off. It was a sickening prospect, as it was precisely designed to kill and maim children. So I get you, when you tell me that terrorists aren’t f@$#ing around, and that this still is the real deal. I know this very well to be true. And sure, the New York and Washington attacks had no comparison to those that I lived through and give me no understanding of the suffering of those who perished. But it does give me some perspective. And I remember a very different response, and a very different form of military and political resolve. Above all, and this is the point, I remember a very different use of political iconography. These are all choices we make collectively, and it takes place as much on the physical and political battlefield, as it does in the media war. Video games, as many have pointed out, have not been neutral on this front.

But, as you have correctly reminded us — and thank you for looking –, despite all this posturing this was obviously not what the piece was originally about. To suggest otherwise would be absurd. For Leipzig I was simply trying to return to that moment, thick as it is now with the veneer of the current war strategy plastered over it. I still remember a very disturbing emotion, at once very raw, and yet immediately mediated. Against all of the bazillions of quotations that all of us have placed around it, I was attempting to tap back into that instant, and revisit it. Perhaps my choice of a quote here and an icon there suggested a too-obvious form of caricature that has attached itself to this event. Perhaps the idea itself is purely tasteless. Perhaps. Meanwhile, as I switch the channels on my american TV set, commercials bombard me with “World Trade Center Commemorative Coins!” in yet another attempt to bury this moment in insignificance. So, if people out there feel I was trivializing the event in giving it the form I did, I can accept that, and I’m certainly willing to hear their arguments — quite numerous at last count in the various forums. But consider our current context nonetheless.

• “Art. Because the word “pretentious” is just far too long.” - ArcaneDevice at 02:47 PM on 08/23/08

That’s pretty damn funny.

• “So its means that we should fight against terrorism with more than “one cannon”, and that in order to defeat evil/invaders, we must fight it with more force and in multiple ways. I just think you went about it with a poor choice, and at least you tried something.” - ADAM!!! - 25 August, 2008 @ 01:15 am
• “Personally, I quite liked the futility of the game and that you can’t ever win against the “invaders” - very apt.” - Kazzahdrane - 21 August, 2008 @ 04:06 am

The way in which the game play was designed, it is actually possible to endlessly “beat” the game by simply getting enough people to shoot at it with their arms, feet, head, whatever. The Invaders! will of course never give up, but that was also the power of coin-operated games. The “Game Over” screen is an integral part of its narrative arc; one can nevertheless delay that arrival, finding different strategies of keeping it at bay, and that was always the emotional power of this form of gaming.

When Andreas Lange asked me to make the piece multiplayer, one of the first things that I tried to do was to find a balance between playing the game by yourself, and playing it with others. I spent quite a lot of time on this aspect, and ran several different simulations on the frequency required to actually keep the game playing, eternally. In one simulation, the piece had ran over a week, and had an astronomical score. I even changed the bit-width of certain variables, just to make sure that scores could grow big enough. This possibility was programmed-in, if you will, as an extreme possibility, and I was quite hoping to see someone attempt it in Leipzig. Now, since you have to actually move your body with a certain velocity to actually shoot, this will obviously tire you out. But it does not preclude using others to take over while you recuperate, or even mounting some sort of mechanical device in front of the camera and just let the thing play on autopilot. There’s always a way to trick the machine. You can shoot the way I suggested in the instructions, and then there’s how people will actually do it. I’ve seen videos on the web of a fellow that pretty much figured out the necessary velocity to trick the camera into giving him multiple shots (he also looked pretty silly doing it, but at least he got a high score). But my point is that there were some creative strategies to be found there, and I figured that some ingenious soul (American or otherwise) might find their own trick. Who knows how long people could have kept up the fight?

• “1. This guy doesn’t believe video games are capable of being art. He outright said this. 2. He created it September 12th, 2001, not just recently. 3. He himself has changed what he claims the meaning of the artwork is a number of times. He has called it (Himself, mind you) a) A study in Mathematics B) A game in which the common man can fight back against the invaders C) A weak, meaningless piece of work that has been diluted by the Iraq War and D) A commentary on the current warfare plan.” - Ad-hominem at 09:56 PM on 08/22/08

I’ll leave the mathematics part for another debate (I was probably talking about algorithms, but I might be wrong, feel free to send me the quote). But I have definitely said in the past that video games are not de facto Art, which probably — in most discussions — refers to the “fine arts”. It is definitely an “art form”, but I have always said that the whole “games as art” debate is less about art, and what-is-art (yawn, boring!), than about art institutions and therefore respectability. Art institutions have long, complex histories and ideologies, and I’m not sure video games want to be a part of some of these institutions anyway. But they are definitely of a different ilk in their current form, and I also think that video games, the industry, and its most ardent proponents, still have a lot to learn on this front. There is definitely a tendency towards a fairly myopic vision of gaming and its reach, and yes this includes the core gamer crowd. There is a whole world out there of critical gaming, art games, call-it-what-you-will that I suspect many people out there have never heard of.

Oh, and if people think that by creating a minor scandal in a commercial game faire I am somehow moving myself up the art ladder, they clearly have no idea how that world ticks.

• “Yah, this has obviously become more about the artist and the WTC than Space Invaders. Way to steal the thunder from the game itself, jerk.” - art_zombie at 01:45 PM on 08/20/08

Yes, that might indeed be true. But I’ve always signed my work as a form of responsibility — unlike, by the way, some of those making threats not only against me, but against members of my family. If that makes me a “douche bag” who deliberately offends so many people and then tries to pass it off as “art”, so be it. I don’t see the artistic merit in merely offending people, but then again, I think your point is that this work was not really all that successful as a piece of art. And that too, might be true. I would like to mention again, that I think it is a shame that this debate is not discussing the gameplay, or at least starting from that point, instead of vague first impressions concerning the work, riddled as they were with very specific incendiary rhetoric, almost designed for a headline on Fox News. But back to your point, I happen to think that the work was not in any way an insult to Space Invaders, a brilliant game that has taken on its own mythological status, and that in fact my take on it is really something else altogether, and that most people get this, or should. Space Invaders is, in fact, like many Japanese games, a very innocent affair, and joyously so. One fights with no clear political context, and it is as ethically ambiguous as cleaning your bathroom of mold, or shooing away ants while you picnic. So when I allude to certain aspects of that game, I am very obviously reading it on a whole other level. I am, of course, reading history backwards, as if that wasn’t already obvious. If somehow someone confuses this with the original game itself, or its makers, it is unfortunate, and I am indeed very sorry for that.

• “I have an idea for a piece of performance art you might be interested in, it involves me shoving the Eiffel Tower up your ass until you choke on your damn colon and begin to vomit your own lungs.” - Sus - 21 August, 2008 @ 04:06 am

I’ve never been all that big on performance art myself. But if you wanted to make a game of that, I’d definitely want to play it.

Update (27/08): Ok, so it appears that most of the debate has finally turned into something more constructive, even if I still feel that the whole thing is quite overblown and not worthy of our time. However, there remains one final complaint that I find quite valid, and indeed cause for confusion, and that is concerning why I actually took the piece down. I tried to adress this in my original statement, but given the numerous demands for comment, apparently more context is needed there too. Here is more or less what I said to a journalist last night:

The reasons for pulling the work are numerous and complex. There was above all the whole tone of the media circus which I have already commented at length, and of course I had placed the organizers of the Games Convention in something of a bind due to the fact that Taito is one of their clients. On the legal front, we discussed the matter briefly and came to the conclusion that any claims of infringement were untenable, and that it was important to defend a work of art in principle. But unfortunately, other concerns had in the meantime raised their heads, thanks (in part, but not entirely) to the various threats on me (whatever) and my family (wtf!?) — in other words that modern form of the witch-hunt, a favourite sport of our times. It was at this point that I made my decision, which obviously places serious doubts on my credibility (no big deal, I’ll survive), but at least had the advantage of slowing somewhat the momentum of the most extreme elements. For all of these reasons, and others too involved to get into here, I again take full responsibility for the decision to take down the work.

Obviously people will have their own take on all this, and I invite you to think whatever you will.

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.”

Download link: here

For the features, you have internal (via OpenCV) and external (via Processing) capture, basic image treatment (threshold, comparison, extraction, etc), contour tracking, face & body tracking, and a few other little goodies thrown in here and there. So, as it stands, you can (for example), recognize someone’s face, grab the outline of that face, and go into the image data of that person’s face to extract the face data. Or, you could use infrared filters with lights pointed at or placed on your body (see below), a multi-touch surface, or some other artificial lighting condition to grab light blobs for finger or body-part tracking and use that data somehow in Processing. There are obviously many possibilities.

Some of the things you cannot yet do, and which we plan to add to the library: motion history images and optical flow (pixel tracking), kalman predictions, color tracking, histograms, and obviously the list could go on and on. A lot of these functions I already have working in OpenFrameworks for an installation (soon to be announced) which will be exhibited later this summer. So consider the current release a starting point, with what we believe is a fairly clean start, but we could be wrong on that. The code is open, so go in and dig around — perhaps you can give us some good advice or add to the code yourself.

Special note: this library will also work for pure Java work, and yes, there is Java documentation.

So, why did it take so long? Well… when I say that we’ve been busy testing it in laboratory and real-world instances, I mean it. I’ve gotten some mail on this recently, so I should make things a little clearer: if you ever wondered why I don’t post as much as I (or apparently some of you) would like, it’s because I’m busy elsewhere working on so many @#&*$% projects. I do not just work on my own projects and I am definitely not a full-time blogger : I teach, run an atelier, collaborate with other artists, do research, write, write code, consult, curate, and somewhere in there, I’m a dad for two lovely and brilliant young (or youngish) women. Since I don’t have a secretary, nor a double, that means some creative Douglas-time-sharing. So when I’m quiet here, it most certainly means that I’m busy doing one of these other things. And over the past few months, that has worked out to about 50% of my creative work involving OpenCV in Processing and OpenFrameworks.

And on Stéphane’s side, he’s been just as busy working over the past six months on a gazillion projects for various artists, art students, and researchers; and only a part of that work involved this OpenCV library.

So, what have we been doing with it? The library has already been used in numerous projects at the Atelier Hypermédia, in external workshops at schools such as the Institut d’Arts Visuels in Orléans, as a research tool at the DRII laboratory (Dispositifs relationnels : Installations Interactives) at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and in two public works, one an installation for Gamerz 0.2 and the other as a component of a haptic dance performance-dispositif by Wolf Ka and his studio. Finally, we used the library to prototype an urban-design project by Lei Zhao for the Studio Lentigo, Marseille although this project was eventually finished in OpenFrameworks due to the high video performance demands of the installation. So all in all, about a dozen different projects over the past few months.

Here are a few images/videos with links for more information on the author(s)/works:

• Wolf Ka + cie, Moving By Numbers (see link for video).

• Atelier Hypermédia, C’est toi la patate.

• Lei Zhao, Node City (follow link for more videos).

• Fabien Artal, Diplôme DNSEP (avec les félicitations du jury), L’école supérieure d’Aix-en-Provence. There is a video, but you’ll have to jump to 23:15 for Fabien’s installation.

• Students of the Institut d’Arts Visuels, Workshop Légerté + Nuit des musées, Orléans (follow this link for — very poor quality — video).

• I’ll leave off with these images from an installation Stefan Schwabe created with his collaborator Sebastian Neitsch in a public pool in Halle. As swimmers wade about, their movements are tracked by a camera and modify an image built out of 4 overlapping projectors, projecting onto the dome of the rotunda. It should be mentioned that, like Lei Zhao’s Node City, this piece used Processing only during the prototyping phase (the final work was created in vvvv). Nevertheless, Stefan & Sebastian’s project was an important one in our year-long experimentation with various forms of video surveillance in art and design installations. (See Stefan’s website for video of this installation).

Update: I used the wrong terminology. Oops. We decided to call this version v01, precisely to suggest that there is still much progress to be made. Previously I called it v1.0, which is a very different idea!

Five minutes later, this brand-spanking new software has crashed. Hmmm. That sucks. Okay, try again. The damn thing crashes again. Hmmm. Well, apparently, it has something to do with font support; okay, avoid that, try again. “Your application has unexpectedly quit,” and so on for days. Try simple stuff, complicated stuff = crash. Cannot open any significant project from pre-Director 11. I give up. Report bugs. Move on to something else.

So I gave it a few weeks, figuring Adobe would solve the problems that are always hanging around as software goes out the door. I even try copying individual media and scripts by hand, avoiding their “updater” which has now just crashed for the gazillionth time. No luck. Or the thing appears to work for a few seconds, then crashes at some random moment. Try another machine, try a clean install, rinse, lather, repeat…

Finally, I go back to their website. Try the forums, no help there. Try another bug report, probably won’t answer just like a few weeks ago. Try technical support…what!? I have to f@#&§! pay forty dollars just to get help making a supported feature actually work!?

The notion that professional software is somehow more efficient, or (gasp) simply professional, is in the end just a hoax. The illusion that actually having paid for the software will somehow give you some service when it breaks? Yeah, right. To compare real-world experiences: last week I had a bug in OpenFrameworks; I just opened up the code, fixed it, and moved on. I lost maybe a few minutes. Where do I turn when I have a bug in Director? Their website is like a fortress. Oh, sorry, I meant so say a crypt…

I will be in Italy next week (from Saturday evening to Wednesday morning), in the Puglia region, for a mini-workshop (Monday afternoon + Tuesday morning) on the usual: code-based art, using development tools in an artistic context, interactive installations, and the type of work we do at the Atelier Hypermédia. Of note, I will be presenting the tools we use, and in that mix will be OpenFrameworks, which might be of interest. It unfortunately is a very short workshop (not even a real workshop if you ask me), so I wouldn’t suggest crossing Italy to come, but if you’re in the region or at the festival, drop by and we’ll talk about how these tools are used.

To be honest, I’ve never been to Italy, and when Seconde Nature invited to sponsor my trip, I said to myself why not? At least the context looks pleasant.

Here is a presentation in English, French and Italian (I cannot confirm the validity of the Italian translation ;-) :

Since 1998, The Atelier Hypermédia in Aix-en-Provence has been developing tools and procedures for creating art via algorithmic means, be it physical, networked, mediatic or social. This involves, principally, teaching young artists the nature of the most popular algorithmic machine — the digital computer — and exploring what sort of work can be created when we are no longer tied to pre-baked software. This short workshop will begin with a presentation of the Atelier’s tools and working methods, followed by an open discussion and demonstration for participants wishing to explore creative production in the domains of: code|art, networked objects, algorithmic media, experimental interfaces, and (last but not least) play. Time and space has also been reserved the following morning for participants wishing to spend more time exploring these tools in a practical context. Three open platforms for artistic production will be used during this mini-workshop: Processing, Arduino, and OpenFrameworks. To participate in the workshop please make a reservation at the Meeting Point.

Depuis 1998, l’Atelier Hypermédia à Aix-en-Provence conçoit des outils et méthodes de création artistique dans un monde de plus en plus traversé par la question de l’algorithme : que ce soit physiquement, à travers les réseaux, dans les médias, ou via les relations sociales. La plupart du temps, cette activité implique l’apprentissage des contours techniques et idéologiques des machines algorithmiques les plus utilisées aujourd’hui : les ordinateurs. L’objectif, par contre, n’est pas la technicité, mais plutôt l’exploration des nouvelles possibilités qui s’ouvrent dès lors que l’artiste refuse la posture du consommateur de logiciels. Ce court workshop, commencera par une présentation des méthodes et outils de travail de l’Atelier Hypermédia, suivi d’une discussion ouverte, accompagné de démonstrations pour des artistes voulant explorer la création artistique dans des domaines telles que : le code|art, les objets orientés réseau, les médias algorithmiques, les interfaces expérimentales, et enfin, les jeux. Du temps et de l’espace sera également consacré le lendemain matin pour les participants voulant passer plus de temps avec ses approches. Trois plates-formes ouvertes, conçues pour et par des artistes, seront utilisées pendant ce mini-workshop : Processing, Arduino, et OpenFrameworks. Pour participer au workshop, merci de bien vouloir réserver votre place au Meeting Point.

Dal 1998 l’Atelier Hypermédia di Aix-en-Provence (Francia) ha sviluppato delle utilità e dei metodi di creazione artistica in un ambiente, che si esso fisico, sociale, virtuale o mediatico, sempre più segnato dalla questione numerica e dagli algoritmi. Nella quasi totalità dei casi la padronanza di questi ambienti dall’apprendimento degli algoritmi e dalla padronanza dei software: in poche parole da una conoscenza approfondita del computer. L’obiettivo, tuttavia, non è il tecnicismo ma l’esplorazione delle nuove possibilità che si aprono nel momento in cui l’artista rifiuta il ruolo di consumatore passivo di software. Il workshop comincerà con una presentazione dei metodi e delle utilità di lavoro dell’Atelier Hypermédia; seguirà una discussione aperta accompagnata da dimostrazioni per gli artisti che vogliono esplorare la creazione artistica nei seguenti ambiti: codice/arte, oggetti in rete, media algoritmi, interfacce sperimentali, e i giochi. Per chi volesse approfondire, inoltre, queste tematiche potrà richiedere la continuazione del workshop nella mattinata del 27 maggio. Durante il workshop saranno utilizzate tre piattaforme libere: Processing, Arduino, et OpenFrameworks. Per partecipare al workshop è richiesta l’iscrizione presso il Meetng Point.

So it got me thinking about some other code songs:

Which was probably inspired by Joe Wecker’s DeCSS Decryption Song, which also has lead to this MIDI version of the DeCSS Decryption algorithm (for more information, visit David S. Touretsky’s Gallery of DeCSS descramblers).

On the purely cultural side of code, geeks, and computers, there’s always ytcracker and MC Frontalot:

Which led me to this song, which is kinda ok (euh, maybe not):

I could go on and on, but at least it gave me an excuse to link to this cheezy rock song which tortured us in the 80’s. To be honest, it isn’t really about the same kind of code, but who cares — I mean come on, check out that hair!

He and I chatted quite a bit during his residency, and I loved the work he produced there, especially this overloaded joystick.

So when the TWS asked me to write an accompagnying blurb to contextualize Antonin’s residency, I was more than happy to oblige. Here is the short text I wrote, followed by a few photos from Antonin’s work during his stay:

Antontin Fourneau, or the Double-Bearded Frenchman

When starting an artistic career, one of the biggest problems is what to do with all those annoying influences that inspired you in the first place? Borges resumed the problem as that of Hamlet’s ghost: how can the play go on, when all these annoying predecessors keep (literally) popping in their heads? A young artist should resolve these issues fairly quickly, and somehow Antonin Fourneau seems to have solved his artistic identity crisis through a very special secret ingredient: a sophisticated form of amateurism. Antonin’s hydra-monster of influences are very much infused with the energy of popular culture. What better context for inspiration then, than the supercharged japanese recycling-plant of all culture, continually giving birth to new definitions of comics, teenagers, gaming, pop, … But beyond recycling, beyond pop, and beyond the topical accuracy of video games as our future medium, there is an added impression of fun in all of Antonin’s work, a sort of sincerity that only an amateur could understand. “Amateur” — in the sense of lover or aficionado. A delightful ignorance of the cynical blasé of fancy contemporary artists negotiating their next posture. A favorite figure that continually returns in his work, is that of the bearded lady: that cliché of otherness that in its lack of sophistication somehow becomes its own caricature; except of course for the pre-adolescent child, who gazes upon it in rapturous wonderment. When I look at some twenty-odd buttons of all sizes joyfully scattered about a controller, I can only read in it a boyish call to the gaming industry: “please someone, come and bring some joy back into this stick”. In this way, Antonin has stolen that ladybeard and placed it on top of his own, thereby redefining his own — very French, and very devilish — form of a wink, which is both innocent and sophisticated, all at the same time.

I’ve been invited to speak tomorrow in Marseille for a conference series on the relationship between the art work (« l’oeuvre ») and its reception (participatory, interactive, relational). Anyone who knows me, knows my hostility to these terms, so for my part, I will be trying to politely move beyond them, which seem to me very tied to some old debates from the 80’s and 90’s, especially here in France. I will instead propose a model that includes interactivity but without situating it either at the work’s inception, nor at its terminus.

These conferences will be published later by the University of Provence.

• De nouvelles figures de l’artiste et de l’expérience sensible
• le 21 avril 2008
• « Appareillage informatique ou ancrage affectif : du concept d’Hypermédia au percept de Déposition sculpturale ? » par Julien Honnorat
• « Antagonisme et imbrication : au-delà de la notion d’interactivité » par Douglas Edric Stanley
• • La participation comme nouveau regard sur l’œuvre
• le 28 avril 2008
• « Le spectateur dans l’oeuvre : identification, distanciation, appropriation » par Nicolas Ferrier
• « Mythologies du spec’acteur des arts de la rue » par Anne Gonon
• • Quel devenir pour les politiques culturelles
• le 05 mai 2008
• « L’action publique culturelle et artistique à l’ère de la participation généralisée » par Fabrice Raffin
• « Les enjeux de la démocratisation culturelle à l’âge de l’œuvre participative : ou que reste-t-il du spectateur-sujet quand il devient co-auteur de l’œuvre ? » par Loïc Lafargue

I’m not sure I’ve found what I’m looking for in terms of legally embeddable fonts. It actually harder than you might think to find interesting, yet readable, open fonts. If you use this feature, be careful: you cannot embed commercial fonts as this would be the equivalent of distributing them and could get you into trouble. Some web designers have complained about this, but I actually think this is a Good Thing™. We need a more developed open type community — and no, embedding fonts in Flash is not a solution — and this will only accelerate that process.

Which reminds me — there’s this brilliant project currently in beta where you can “build, share, download” open typefaces: FontStruct over at the infamous FontShop. It’s a great service, even if it still needs a lot of work. You can even embed a flash example into your blog or webpage, as in the following Pixel Cube example:

I don’t know how long I’ll be using this font (it has a lot of issues), and for the moment I have yet to figure out how to single out browsers that do and do not support this feature, in order to create the right type relationships for those that do not. For the moment, I’m figuring most cannot see these fonts, and so the sizing is all wrong. But whatever the case I think it’s great to see a community tool perfectly in sync with this complex issue, and if you think my website is now even uglier than before, please give me some time to figure out how to deal with this (welcome) extra layer.

This week Plot was supposed to be in the Pyrenées — riding rustic trains, going for walks in the mountains, playing with accelerometers and GPS, and watching The Sound of Music, Moloch and other mountain movies — but through various accidents we ended up transporting the entire mountain to Aix-en-Provence.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing, interviews, conferences, etc. that I haven’t been able to comment on from this blog because much of it has yet to be published. But today I just got word that one of these theoretical texts has finally been published, and ran on Radio Grenouille monday morning. It is a text I wrote for Marc Voiry on the subject of the “Myth of the moth: towards a mothology of computer science” (sorry, this just doesn’t translate). Marc wanted to reactualize Roland Barthes’ famous texts of the 1950’s — published in 1957 under the name Mythologies — and invited various thinkers to ponder the mythologies of today, and in some cases return to the mythologies of Barthes some 50 years later to see what had changed. It promises to be a great series considering those he’s invited, and should be a fun listen.

For my ten minute slot, I wrote/spoke about the mythology of the computer bug, and the relationship between one mythical moth and one mythical machine, and how their meeting constructed a mythology that informs us still today. It is an attempt to construct a “miteology” that allows for an epistemological reading of computer science, i.e. how its mythologies can inform us about its internal (logical, conceptual, political) contradictions. It’s about machines, compilers, interfaces, circuits, algorithms and how they relate to one poor moth still (to this day) mumified under a piece of transparent tape while exposed for all eyes to see at the Smithsonian.

Unfortunately, I’m a horrible reader, and pretty much incapable of reading my own damn text without stumbling all over the place. It is strange the degree to which writing and speaking French are two totally different activities for me. I learned the language so late, and yet have depended on it so intimately for practically all of my theoretical activity, and somewhere in that tangle of neurons I have two totally different understandings of the French language that are simply not compatible. I am just not comfortable reading out loud in French. Whereas the text itself was written quite joyously, with a certain sense of freedom; a feeling that I often feel when teaching, for example. But writing a text in French, and then reading it out-loud, just doesn’t seem to work. Pity. I quite enjoyed it.

So for those (like me) that can’t labour through my cracking voice that sounds as if its owner was just introduced to puberty, here is the original text :

• Le mythe de la mite : vers une mite-ology de l’informatique

Pourquoi devons-nous soigner autant toutes ces petites machines qui nous entourent ? Pourquoi faut-il dompter en permanence ces appareils qui n’arrêtent pas de pousser dans nos bureaux, dans nos maisons, qui rentrent jusque dans nos lits ? Pourquoi doit-on les rassurer pour qu’elles ronronnent sans piquer des crises et perdre tous nos précieuses données; les caresser dans le bon sens du poil pour qu’elles nous offrent leurs services tant convoitées ? Pourquoi la tâche d’opérer d’une machine informatique contemporaine ressemble autant aux labeurs du jardinier, qui doit désherber de manière cyclique son jardin pour qu’il pousse convenablement ? Et puis, la véritable question devant tout ceux qui n’arrivent pas à installer la dernier version de Word : est-ce qu’il sera toujours aussi difficile d’actuer ces machines ? Est-ce qu’elles ont toujours été si difficiles, si fragiles, toujours aussi enrageantes ?

Le terme de « bug », c’est-à-dire la « petite bestiole » qui encrasse la machine et l’empêche de fonctionner normalement, ne naît pas avec l’informatique, mais on peut affirmer à l’inverse que cette dernière est née incontestablement — dans une scène historique très précise — avec lui. Si le mot « bug » est entrée dans le vocabulaire populaire, c’est justement parce que l’informatique s’est popularisée — le « personal computer », qui arrive autant infesté de bestioles que toutes les machines qui l’ont précédé.

La première à mythologiser le rapport entre l’informatique et ses défaillances, c’est Grace Murray Hopper, programmeuse du premier ordinateur digne de ce nom — le Mark I, qui voit le jour vers la fin de la guerre en 1944 à l’Université de Harvard. C’est un détail inconnu pour beaucoup de français, mais parmi les premières algoristes historiques, trouvent deux femmes — Grace Murray Hopper et Augusta Ada Byron, comtesse de Lovelace, fille du célèbre poète, qui travaillait quelques cent ans avant Hopper sur la « Machine analytique » en assistant Charles Babbage sur la traduction de thèses mathématiques et sur la correction d’algorithmes pour sa machine qui restera pendant 150 ans inachevée. Pour sa part, Grace Murray Hopper travaillera sur la création de « compilateurs », c’est-à-dire les mécanismes de traduction des instructions lisibles par les êtres humains et qui doivent être traduites ensuite en un langage plus étrange — compréhensible presque exclusivement par la machine. Car écrire directement en langage machine — en 0 et en 1 –, est une exercice rarement supportable pour le commun des mortels, et même fatiguant pour les quelques exceptions comme Hopper qui maîtrisaient l’architecture de la machine avec sa logique particulière. Faciliter l’écriture des programmes permettraient à un plus grand nombre d’accéder aux capacités de l’ordinateur, et aiderait à écrire des programmes capables d’effectuer des actions de plus en plus complexes.

Mais avant de parler de la complexité, racontons l’anecdote que Grace Hopper aimait tant raconter, c’est-à-dire le jour du premier « bug » informatique. Les premières machines informatiques étaient de véritables monstres qui pouvaient occuper plusieurs salles entières. Elles étaient aussi grandes à cause des différents actionneurs mécaniques qui contrôlaient et executaient les instructions. Ces actionneurs occupaient non seulement de la place mais produisait énormément de chaleur et de bruit. Le 9 septembre 1947 — notre journée mythique – un véritable insecte, une petite mite, s’est glissée dans la salle du Mark I et croyant apercevoir le chemin menant à la lumière du soleil s’est incrustée dans les contactes de l’appareil, provoquant une panne général accompagné de la mort de l’insecte. Au départ, les ingénieurs pensaient qu’il s’agissaient d’une simple erreur humaine, c’est-à-dire d’un phénomène déjà décrit par Ada Lovelace quelques 100 ans auparavant où une erreur d’ordre ou de logique placée au début du programme empêcheraient la partie suivante de fonctionner. Mais après relecture des instructions on ne trouvait nulle erreur, ce qui les amenait à la deuxième phase d’investigation, la vérification de chacun des relais qui très souvent tombaient en panne à cause de l’effort physique de la machine. On l’oublie souvent, mais une machine informatique — bien qu’elle s’opère par grandes abstractions logiques dans son organisation diagrammatique — est toujours actionnée par un jeux de verrins physiques quelconques et en 1947 les défaillances étaient la plupart du temps dû au mauvais fonctionnements physiques des composants. C’est alors pendant la vérification un par un des relais de la machine, que l’équipe de Hopper découvre la mite coincée entre deux contacts en cuivre. Dans un geste dont le résultat est encore exposé aujourd’hui dans la partie du musée national américain dédié aux sciences — le Smithsonian — ces ingénieurs ont extrait la bestiole et l’ont scotché dans leur journal de bord accompagné par la légende, “1545 : Relais #70 Panel F (mite) dans le relais. Premier cas de découverte d’une véritable bogue.”

Nous ne pouvons pas insister assez sur la force mythique de cette anecdote. Même la langue française porte les traces de cette histoire : alors que le terme anglais « bug » est un héritage du français « parasite » — encore employé aujourd’hui en décrivant, par exemple, le bruit qui parasite un signal électrique –, ce terme a été réimporté en français sous la forme « bogue » pour décrire cette défaillance spécifique de la panne de fonctionnement /algorithmique/ de la machine informatique. Il ne s’agit pas d’un simple gêne, ou perte relative du signal; il s’agit d’une /panne/ de la machine dans tout son fonctionnement, ou dans le fonctionnement d’un aspect de la machine comme dans un logiciel qui « plante ». On est proche de l’idée d’un « arrêt » du mouvement de la machine, d’une dislocation ou de son déraillement, plutôt qu’un simple ralentissement ou affectation qualitative. Le scotch employé ce jour de septembre 1947 semble avoir scellé à jamais l’idée qu’une panne algorithmique est liée non pas à la faute de raisonnement dans l’écriture d’un programme — la véritable raison de la plupart de nos pannes –, mais plutôt à une violence introduite dans l’appareil depuis sa strate physique.

La force de tout mythe est de condenser un certain nombre de contradictions internes d’un phénomène quelconque à travers une figure qui raconte de façon synthétique l’histoire de sa conception. Le mythe est une histoire de naissance. Dans mon vocabulaire à moi, j’appelle ce moment « le talon d’Achille », faisant référence au mythe-matrice du trempage d’Achille dans la rivière Styx et de la trace des doigts de sa mère lorsqu’elle enrobait son fils par son nouveau pouvoir technologique. Le talon d’Achille associe à jamais la force constructive d’une technologie à sa déconstruction; autrement dit, le mode d’emploi qui explique comment monter la machine décrit également dans le même mouvement comment la démanteler.

J’y vois dans ce mythe de la mite, deux contradictions propres à l’informatique qui sont toutes les deux liées à la même racine ontologique, et que je définirai comme le problème d’attitude de la machine face à sa physicalité.

La première contradiction d’une machine algorithmique concerne la tension entre la couche matérielle ou /concrète/ de l’informatique, et sa couche /abstraite/ ou algorithmique. Quand nous décrivons un programme à une machine, nous décrivons un certain « comportement », c’est-à-dire nous lui donnons son « orientation ». Nous ne nous soucions pas forcément de tous les détails de son fonctionnement, et c’est Grace Murray Hopper qui a eu en premier assez de lucidité pour voir la force que l’abstraction pouvait apporter dans le maniement de l’appareil : à travers ses activités de recherche et de développement (menant à terme au langage COBOL), elle a montré que pour programmer une machine il faudrait mieux s’abstraire de son opération purement mécanique — la machine vu à partir de ses circuits –, et à la place lui communiquer plutôt par des grandes lignes. Malheureusement, c’est précisément dans cette abstraction des couches matérielles que les erreurs algorithmiques peuvent s’introduire, notamment dans l’approximation qu’elles font de la manière dont la machine exécutera ses tâches. Parfois les erreurs du programme peuvent venir d’un mauvais ordonnancement purement logique, par exemple le cas déjà décrit par Ada Lovelace en 1842 où le résultat d’un calcul serait demandé par un programme avant même que ce calcul soit lancé. Mais il existe un autre problème de conception des programmes et qui concerne le problème de la traduction de ces instructions algorithmiques (autrement dit le programme comme « Idée ») vers les rouages mécaniques qui doivent physiquement les actionner. Souvent la logique de ses deux couches sont très différentes, et demandent au programmeur (ou programmeuse) une grande gymnastique de la pensée pour maîtriser. On ne maîtrise jamais totalement la bête, d’où divers accidents historiques, comme celui du porte-avion USS Yorktown qui a resté en panne pendant trois heures à cause d’un zéro que Windows NT 4.0 n’a pas su calculer. D’autres erreurs algorithmico-matérielle sont souvent provoquées par la manière dont une valeur est stocké dans la machine : le calcul ne sera pas le même si on utilise deux octets, quatre pour stocker matériellement la valeur de PI dans un registre de la mémoire. Dans ces deux cas, les valeurs après la virgule, ne seront pas les mêmes. Le souci du programmeur est précisément cet endroit où la logique intellectuelle du programme rencontre l’interrupteur machinique qui doit l’actualiser — ce que le mythe de la mite représente sous la forme d’une rencontre de deux mondes ontologiquement incompatibles mais qui cherchent néanmoins à se communiquer. Car il est impossible, voire fatal, de parler avec la machine dans son langage pur.

Ce qui nous amène à la deuxième contradiction constitutive de l’informatique : celle de notre accès à la machine, autrement dit l’interfaçage. Quelque part nous pouvons qualifier l’erreur de la mite d’avoir voulu interagir /directement/ avec la machine. Ce que ce mythe nous apprend, c’est qu’avoir voulu interagir avec la machine sans interface était à la fois fatale pour la machine et pour la mite. Ce conflit nous ramène bel et bien à la contradiction précédente, c’est-à-dire à cet étrange négociation permanente qui doit exister entre la matière et l’abstraction pour que l’informatique puisse fonctionner.

Informé par ces observations, je propose à une humanité de plus en plus imbriquée par contagion à l’informatique, un nouveau champ d’étude — celui de sa mite-ology, qui étudierait la mite informatique dans ce qu’elle aurait de constitutive pour le nouveau monde qui arrive. Au lieu de fuir le plantage ou le bogue, cette mite-ology la prendrait comme la limite constitutive, comme son ouverture. La mite-ology partirait du mythe de la mite comme l’annonce d’une nouvelle physicalité qui en permanence doit accompagner toute agorithmisation de notre polis — autrement nommé sa virtualisation. Pas de nouvelles abstractions, pas de monde soi-distant « virtuel », sans que parallèlement soit engendré des retour de bâton du monde physique qui doit accueillir et rendre compatible (ou incompatible) cette virtualisation. Pas d’algorithmisation du monde sans de nouvelles rencontres avec la mite : cette bestiole qui par curiosité et besoin cherche à créer de nouveaux circuits d’interaction avec le monde.

Yes, I am off to yet another workshop this afternoon. This time to the IAV in Orléans, a design school that is organizing all week a series of workshops, conferences, and presentations dealing with the theme La légèrté (lightness). This concept is obviously following in line with what is probably now 100% of the design schools in the world who have jumped onto the bandwagon of durable design. And yet while I’m thrilled with this turn of events, I wander into this new context with some trepidation; and so as usual I replied to their invitation with an amical quip, reworking the subject of “légèrté” into that of “orientation”, suggesting therein that oppositions such as light vs. heavy do not really grasp the current transformations of space, objects and subjects. In place of such dichotomies, I’m suggesting here that we rework Duchamp’s concept of the “inframince” (ultrathin), taking into account the new forms of re-orientation that are changing our contemporary polis.

On the practical side, this workshop will very much be keeping in line with my steady reorientation to the subject of phyiscalization, and as such we’ll be working with Arduino as much as with Processing.

Here is the full French description of the workshop. I should probably translate it, because there are some essential concepts in there for my current thinking on digital art and design, but I have to get on a train so you’ll just have to use your favorite translator if you can’t read it in the native tongue.

Proposons une nouvelle mesure : celle de la modularité des choses. Encore plus léger que la légerté, l’inframince n’est plus cet espace liminaire qui s’imaginait jadis comme le poids de la fumée — l’intangible comme une sorte d’ontologie indécise. Aujourd’hui l’inframince se définit plutôt dans l’hésitation du neurone avant de se décharger, c’est-à-dire à travers l’esprit intangible qui permet à des choses tangibles de se moduler. C’est le potentiel d’une ontologie à la fois matérielle et varible : « inframince » comme « l’orientation » des choses, « modularité » comme leur « ouverture » sur le monde.

Une approche « orientée » (du design, de l’art, peu importe) se déploit dans un monde physique de plus en plus capable de se réadapter « en fonction de … », « envers … », et « vis-à-vis … ». Pour ce workshop, nous tenterons une avancé vers ce monde en explorant ses machines programmables. Ces machines sont riches mais également complexes. Le but premier sera alors de dompter ses méchanismes modulaires. Pour y arriver, nous utiliserons principalement deux environments de création algorithmique — Processing et Arduino –, conçus tous les deux pour et par des artistes voulant rendre (plus) accessible la création modulaire.

L’intérêt de ces deux environements réside non seulement dans l’accès qu’ils donnent à l’intéractivité, la générativité, l’interfaçage ou la mobilité; ils sont surtout essentiels pour la continuité qu’ils permettent entre le monde des médias et celui de l’espace physique. Car pour nous il s’agit d’un seul et même continuum entre l’algorithme côté machine et son « expression » dans le monde physique. C’est dans ce sens que nous ne parlons plus du composition de l’objet mais de son orientation, c’est-à-dire de la façon dont un objet peut s’exprimer dans l’espace d’une installation à travers un programme informatique ou vice versa. C’est ce que nous appelons la « physicalisation » du monde algorithme.

Bien que cela ne soit pas l’objetif principal du workshop, ces expérimentations peuvent mener à terme vers l’argument implicit dans celui de la « légerté en design » : autrement dit le développement durable et le « poids » des interventions de l’homme. Pour nous, la réflexion sur la transformation du monde ne peut pas faire abstraction des nouvelles abstractions algorithmiques qui s’abattent sur nos territoires, y compris dans leurs dimensions politiques. Pour ne donner qu’un exemple, nous ne voyons pas dans le balisage du paysage uniquement des histoires de localisation, mais aussi de la gestion du territoire. Nous nous opposons en conséquence à toute idée de dématérialisation qui ne s’accompagnerait pas d’une réflexion sur la re-matérialisation; c’est-à-dire l’hypermatérialisation. C’est dans ce sens que nous parlerons d’une « orientation algorithmique » qui approche le monde non plus comme une série d’artefactes plus ou moins lourdes mais plutôt comme un territoire de choses en évolution constante capables d’être mesurées par leur modularité.

Puisqu’il est de la résponsabilité du designer d’être à la fois en phase et déphasé avec son temps, ce workshop propose de répondre à ces constats à travers des expériences concrètes avec les formes directement résponsables, et voir les réponses artistiques qui s’en suivent.

Hi. I’ll be in Bordeaux this week, in yet another workshop on how to make art using code. Here’s the official statement:

• Workshop Art du code par Douglas Edric Stanley
• professeur d’Arts numériques à L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence
• 25 étudiants (bases en informatique souhaitées)
• Préinscriptions au secrétariat de l’école

Introduction aux pratiques actuelles de la programmation dans le champs artistique. Initiation au logiciel open source Processing. (processing.org)

Artiste d’origine américaine, Douglas Edric Stanley est professeur d’Arts numériques à L’école supérieure d’art d’Aix-en-Provence où il intervient dans des champs tels que l’esthétique informatique, l’interactivité, la robotique, et la programmation, et dirige L’atelier Hypermédia, un atelier qui traite l’algorithme et le code en tant que matières plastiques. Depuis 1997, il a donné de nombreux workshops sur la programmation dans un contexte artistique pour divers institutions, universités et écoles d’art. Il a participé en tant qu’artiste à des expositions liées à l’art informatique, dont la Biennale ICC, Tokyo; le Festival Ars Electronica, Linz; ZeroOne/ISEA2006, San Jose; EnterMultimediale, Prague; Villette Numérique, Paris; Festival Némo, Paris; Ecoute, Centre Pompidou, Paris. En 2000, il a reçu une mention aux Prix Ars Electronica pour son installation à retour d’effort, Asymptote. Il est également chercheur au Laboratoire Esthéthique de l’Interactivité à Paris 8, où il travaille sur les trasformations de l’art face à l’algorithmisation du monde.

Of course, the library can’t do everything I want. For example, I need some pretty advanced sound capabilities, and I’m not sure the included sound functions — which do seem useable — will be robust enough. I might have to give up that library and switch to another one, or it might be the one place where I’ll have to barrel down into the registers, setup interrupts, deal with FIFO registers, etc. myself. But that’s fine, because everything else is so easy: generate the graphics in whatever — making sure you stay within a limited range of colors –, convert those images using one of the included tools (or make your own using Processing or whatever, it’s pretty easy), load that data into the sprite registers, and then let the DS do all the work: all you have to do is set the sprite’s x and y positions and the DS hardware does all the rest.

I’m still amazed at Nintendo’s hardware style. I always loved how the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance were just tiny little processors, surrounded by all these well-chosen chips dedicated to putting sprites and tiles on the screen, and generating the necessary beeps and boops. I’m all for specialized chips and processors, and I think think they’re going to be even more important as we move more as a society towards serious power conservation. So I love these crazy japanese designs and extreme efficiency. But it also amazes me the extent to which the DS is just a souped-up Gameboy Advance. It’s exactly the same strategy they came up with for the Wii: start with the previous platform (Gamecube), and tack an interesting interface onto it with some minor audiovisual improvements. Also, make sure there’s N64-style 3d graphics capabilities. This of course is great for me: all the original registers that I know all-too-well are still there, but with an added processor for handling the second screen, and new functions for handling Wifi, the stylus, and so on. There are also more sound channels, and even some of the old-skool Gameboy sounds are still hanging around (which is really tempting me right now in the current project). But again, I haven’t gotten around to the sound yet because that’s when the real work starts. For now, I’m just having fun finding new movements for the stylus.

It’s also interesting, after sitting through the (eye-opening) iphone sdk video, and now playing around with the DS touch interface, to see how far we have all come on physical gesturing, no matter what the input format. I’ve found myself adding a lot of iPhone-style touch gestures using the very limited input of the DS, which is very eerie for me, because a lot of these gestures hark back to efforts I made back in the 1990’s (remember when CD-Roms were all the rage?). These gestures take on new meaning for me, now that they’ve been placed into this new historical perspective offered by the Wiimote and the iPhone. For example, a lot of the work I did with Claude Faure (see video) was already playing with the physicality of the interface. This was quite clear to us, even then. But that said, this work takes on new meaning now that all these gestures have come of age — or are simply breaking out in all their pimply pubescent enthusiam (it all depends on how much you like or dislike these new semiotics).

The DS, the Wii, and the iPhone are important indicators on where we’re at on this subject. For example, there was a very prescient moment in the iPhone video (you’ll find it at 00:40:23) where the ‘undo’ function is converted from its previous semiotics of ctrl-z (remember F7=SAVE anyone?) into a simple shaking of the device itself. Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking — this is just a gadget-geek-moment, a golly-gee-wow somewhere up there at the level of sophistication of the blink tag (thanks Netscape). And probably after we’ve all transformed into premature parkinson’s sufferers after shaking our iPhones all day — with some new neurological disorder similar to what keyboards did with carpal tunnel syndrome –, we’ll have had enough of all this goddamn gestural computing. But I still find it amazing to think that ctrl-z can be transformed so easily into a simple flick of the wrist. The same goes for the game they showed at 00:41:03, « Touch Fighter ». There, the iPhone itself is the joystick — uh, yeah, Douglas, I think that’s what the guy already says in the video — and it will be hard to go back after that realization, just as it is now hard to imaging gaming (and DJ’ing) after having played with the Wiimote.

Anyway, to get back to the development nitty-gritty, how do you develop for the DS from a Mac? Since I explained this already to Benoit this afternoon in the Atelier, I should mention it here for later reference. You need to:

• make sure you have installed xCode (free)
• follow the instructions of either: Nintendo DS development for Mac or PAlib Wiki Mac OS X (the later worked fine for me)
• download this PAlib xCode Project template and install as instructed (this will allow you to create a new PAlib project from the “New Project” menu in xCode)
• create a new project in xCode and “build” it
• find a workable emulator to test before loading the “program.nds” file onto the physical DS (no 100% solutions here — I’m currently using NO$GBA from Parallels running Windows inside of my Mac, since I was too lazy to get any other emulators working on my Mac)
• buy some sort of programmable cartridge for copying your program to the DS

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