May 2012
10 posts
7 tags
At The Mountains Of Madness
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New Asthetic Deathmatch at Flux Factory on... →
Hosted by the dynamic duo Julia Kaganskiy and Christina Vassallo… Be there!
artstech:
Flux Factory is pleased to present its latest edition of Flux Death Match, an initiative that takes online debates into real-space at the Flux gallery. Four highly opinionated panelists will illustrate their arguments with images, web references, and other materials in a rapid-fire way that challenges...
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On a more somber note
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The Land of Glorious OpenGL Shader Cheese
On a related note to the false coloring sketches from the other day: I managed to get the normalmap.gdp shader from MeshLab to work in Processing Andres Colubri’s GLGraphics library to handle the shader. Thanks to Greg Borenstein for his sample code, which is available on GitHub.
Crimes against good taste may now commence.
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Faking it (and loving it)
Accidental discovery: Hard shaded distorted geometries lends themselves brilliantly to a bit of Photoshop color trickery. I don’t think I’ve done anything this devious in Photoshop since 1998. It feels like cheating for now, but if I could do it in code it’d be fair game.
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New Ribform 3D prints
New resin 3D prints from my Ribform series, done with Shapeways for their show at Model Citizens during ICFF in New York this weekend. Thanks to Duann Scott for the invitation to show and working out the fabrication!
I’m printing another Ribform permutation for the NYCCT Intersections symposium, this time with a Zcorp gypsum printer. It’ll be interesting to see how they compare.
...
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WatchVideo of screen tests of my work at the Taman Anggrek complex in Jakarta, working with StandardVision. Apparently the facade is the longest in the world at 1160 feet (350m) long. I particularly like the clever abstraction of the image in the stretched-out areas with low pixel pitch, it’s an excellent creative solution to a challenge of economy.
Relating this to the #DIGART discusssion,...
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These images are bound to cheer you up (Great...
Bob and Roberta Smith: Art Amnesty
William Powhida: What Has The Art World Taught Me?
Jonathan Monk: This painting should ideally be hung near a Sol LeWitt
Craig Damrauer: Modern Art (New Math Series)
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"Why are there no Great Digital Artists?" (#DIGART...
Disclaimer: The following is not to be read as a despairing summary of digital art (which is alive and well and continuing to produce interesting work, thank you very much.) Nor is it a suggestion that digital artists need to conform to silly art world “rules” in order to be accepted. It is, however, an attempt at a frank summary of how digital art is doing in the instances where it...
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Probability Lattice
Kilos of ABS, days of Makerbot humming and droning (and prints breaking), hour after hour of vector math.
April 2012
10 posts
4 tags
Tastes like vectors
v=new UVec3(v2).sub(v1).mult(t).add(v1);
v.add(new UVec3(f.n).mult(100));
“Tracking nearly anything you do is alarming and humbling. The aggregates of our...”
– Tom MacWright (Quantified Self)
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From the archives
Rejected sketches from past projects.
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ArtStack: One more (and slightly better) social...
Did I mention I like ArtStack? There’s been quite a few social media platforms for art enthusiasts popping up lately, but typically the focus has been on serving galleries and (everybody’s wet dream) collectors. Art.sy and VIP Art Fair are decent services, but the bias towards the art world model shows. I guess you can’t blame them, it’s a hard sell to begin with and the...
“The terms ‘generative art’ and ‘computer art’ have been used in tandem, and more...”
– Boden, Margaret A., and Ernest A. Edmonds. “What is generative art?” Digital Creativity 20. 1 (2009): 21-46.
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Taking the New Aesthetic to the cleaners
Bruce Sterling just posted a new article about the hotly-debated topic of the New Aesthetic, somewhat flatteringly taking the text I wrote for Creators Project as a departure point (or angle of attack, depending on how you see it.) Go read it: Generation Generator (New Aesthetic).
I’d qualify it as only “somewhat” flattering, though, as his text does take the form of a serious...
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The Problem with Perpetual Newness
[Julia Kaganskiy of The Creators Project asked me to comment on Bruce Sterling’s “Essay On The New Aesthetic” along with 5 other art & tech writers (Kyle Chayka, Jonathan Minard, Greg Borenstein, James George and Kyle McDonald). You can find the collected texts on Creators Project, below is my subjective spin on the subject…]
My take on the New Aesthetic? On immediate...
Truth of the day
When I discuss my physical works with architects they give me props for being “true to the materials”. You’d think they’d suss out that I know nothing about material finishing.
Announcing: Upcoming workshops in New York
April 21: Introduction to Generative Art
May 5: Generative Art, Advanced Topics
May 19: Parametric modeling for 3D printing
This Spring I will be hosting a series of one-day independent Processing workshops in New York, starting April 21. The workshops will focus on generative form strategies (introduction and advanced), with a few more esoteric offshoots like parametric modeling for 3D...
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Things to do 20120401
IN;SP1;PU;PU0,0;PD1000,0;PD1000,1000;PD0,1000;PD0,0;SP0;
Write HPGL exporter to export vector files for plotters. Write HPGL parser to read them back in again. Write code to draw HPGL to screen for preview and composition. Write code for parallel export to PDF for easy archiving.
Extend UGeometry to include a memory of individual quadstrips. Render quadstrips in different colors to produce...
March 2012
5 posts
3 tags
Smell my dataglove
wwwtxt:
Combine a helmet with the dataglove and an accelerometer, and you could do away with screens, keyboards, and everything. ☯88DEC
Random Awesome, March 8 →
Random Awesome is a NYC meetup I host with Jer Thorp. We set it up as an opportunity for art+tech people to meet random new people, with the bonus objective of giving us a chance to hang out with friends we otherwise meet once per year despite the best of intentions…
randommeetup:
Random Awesome is back after a 3-month hiatus. Mark this Thursday (March 8, yes, this week) on your...
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Makerbot test prints done at Generator.x 3.0
During the recent Generator.x 3.0 workshop I did some Makerbot prints that ought to push the limits of what’s printable, i.e. with high surface detail, overhangs, “bridges” etc. Strangely enough the finer detail of a MK7 stepstruder didn’t necessarily help, although to be fair our MK7 machine was plagued by a non-level print platform.
Still, I had some interesting...
February 2012
4 posts
9 tags
Mark Making at Mediaruimte, Brussels
Mark Making, solo show at Mediaruimte, Brussels, Feb 29-March 31, 2012
Mark Making is a summary of recent works using mechanical machine processes to explore drawing in physical media (metal, styrene and MDF). Pieces on display include a new Wall Exploder tape drawing, Arc Drawing 1+2 and three CircGrid pieces on anodized aluminum as well as a new series of drawings on MDF titled ArcSurf.
...
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The Algorithm Thought Police
Update: Jesse Rosenberg from Nervous System has posted a response on their blog, essentially arguing a more purist approach. It’s recommended reading as a counterpoint to my thoughts below, particularly since Jesse is an actual algorithm master whereas I am just a self-taught hack with an unconventional sense of color.
Earlier today I made an off-hand quip on Twitter in response to Jer...
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Thinking about drawing
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Things to do 20120211
Figure out the wonderful world of CNC milling, complete with obscure software, proprietary file formats and lack of meaningful online resources for non-experts. Education in mechanical engineering would be a plus. It’s a brand new “Hello World” out there.
Render videos in WQXGA (2560x1600) resolution and figure out a way to get uncompressed copies to California. I’m...
January 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Attractive glitch
Buggy color fading code.
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Because beats are better when they're just a...
Skrillex: Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. Evil commences at 00:45.
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Poke me in the other eye, please: Artists and...
Perhaps I’m in a personal info-wormhole but lately I’ve become aware of any number of articles, books and lectures explaining in gruesome detail just how unattractive being an artist is in terms of comparative job quality. The other day it was a summary on Rhizome (by John Powers and William Powhida) of a lecture Hans Abbing’ gave on artists and poverty. Abbing is the author of...
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Call: Generator.x 3.0 - from Code to Atoms
The call for participants to the Generator.x 3.0 - from Code to Atoms workshop at iMAL in Brussels next month is still open. We’ll have Makerbots, a laser cutter and a CNC mill on site to play with so if you’re interested in digital fabrication and parametric systems this should be of interest to you.
Full text and entry form can be found at:...
December 2011
4 posts
6 tags
Cellular automata as pattern generator
Working on pattern generation using cellular automata. I haven’t played with CA since 1998, so it feels pretty old school. The rulesets are hard to control, but some of the more regular ones have potential when overlaid. Adding crazy colors gives bonus points.
Clarification: These images were made by manually layering several separate runs of my CA, they’re not the result of a single...
6 tags
RibForm series
Work for a new 3D printing project, built completely in Processing with Wblut’s Hemesh library and my own Modelbuilder. Hemesh was used for the lattice structure, with the underlying structure first being built in Modelbuilder.
Most of these aren’t even printable, the final result (seen here) had to be quite solid and somewhat simplified to be guaranteed to print. The print...
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Open Objects: The Future of Things (lecture)
Lecture about the rise of digital fabrication and parametric design, looking at their implications for creative practices. Specifically, Open Source design (Makerbot and Thingiverse), generative systems and data sculpture.
Given Nov 26, 2011 at Code Camping Amsterdam, Hack de Overheid, Amsterdam
(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript";...
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MBSys - new work for Montblanc
Fast Company Co.Design posted a feature yesterday about a recent project for Montblanc that I was involved in. The article focused on Onformative, showing several nice examples of their piece. But it also named me, somewhat awkward since I hadn’t published any documention and so there was no visual context.
To rectify the situation I’ve now posted some process documentation as...
November 2011
8 posts
9 tags
Death and the J2ME applet (NTLSys 1-3)
I recently posted on Flickr some images of NTLSys 1-3, a J2ME app piece I did for Nokia Trend Labs in 2007. They had been lying around on my hard drive, and even though this is hardly a major work (I do still think it’s somewhat charming) I still thought they were worth archiving permanently.
Then it struck me: This piece will be gone forever in just a year or two. I can still run it on...
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Concept vs. Form, that old chestnut
This post is a response to a longer thread on Google+ between Ben Bogart and myself. Specifically, the following is specifically a response to his long post titled Is generative art conceptual or formal? (the post is not currently public, but if you’re on G+ you might be able to see it).
I don’t believe in segregating work into concept or form camps. But such a division exists de facto....
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WatchBeautiful rules: Generative models of creativity
This is a video of a talk I gave in 2007 at Olhares de Outono at the Portuguese Catholic University in Porto. It’s interesting to see how my spiel has evolved from this point.
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Random Awesome meetup, Nov 16 →
Just announced another Random Awesome meetup in Williamsburg for this Wednesday, come if you’re in the area! There are worse things in life than meeting friendly art+tech people over a cold beer.
Random Awesome:
Time for another Random Awesome meetup, scheduled for this Wednesday at Night of Joy in Williamsburg. You know the drill: Freaks, geeks and artistes - we take all comers. No...
Artist: Zimoun
Unsurprisingly, I’m a big fan of Swiss sound artist Zimoun. His artistic vision is one of clarity, based on kinetic mechanisms that appear at first glance single-mindedly simple, yet once turned on give rise to surprisingly complex outcomes. His assemblages of primitive motors and analogue mechanisms produce unpredictable behaviors that appear almost organic, even though their...
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“Through the repetition of simple rectangular bars that cross over at different...”
– Stefanie Kogler, exhibition review: ‘Abstraction-Creation- Post-War Geometric Abstract Art from Europe and South America’, Austin Desmond Fine Art, Bloomsbury, London, 8th September – 6th October 2010
Anecdotes on seeing vs. reading, plus some musings...
Whenever I read “serious” texts it makes me feel like a cheat for not reading them more often or for being ignorant of so many great texts. Reading is a creative practice all unto itself, never mind writing. I rarely find time for either, it’s either the ADD or the fact that I am committed to a completely parallel “reading” of images and spatial structures. That...
October 2011
8 posts
Interview: How the European Festival Circuit... →
Kyle Chayka (who writes for ARTINFO) interviewed me about differences between the Euro and US media art scenes. My response was to break it down in an almost Marxist analysis, following the money to see what funding and the festival circuit means for the European artists.
My main (subjective) contention is that the festivals are great for emerging artists, not so much for mid-career ones. The...
Wieden+Kennedy: Why We're Not Hiring Creative...
Wieden+Kennedy (via Creative Technology Director +Igor Clark ) says they’re not hiring Creative Technologists in a somewhat holier-(or-at-least-smarter)-than-thou blog post. Here’s the first paragraph:
I’ve pretty much had it with the term “Creative Technology”. I’m a “Creative Technology Director” myself, and even I’m over it: already it...
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Book: NEW ART/SCIENCE AFFINITIES
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Published by the CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and the Miller Gallery, “NEW ART/SCIENCE AFFINITIES” is a new book created in a “book sprint” by some interesting thinkers on the intersection between art and science. I’m pleased to say that it features myself as well as a slew of people one should be...
“Was Nicholas Negroponte, one of the intellectual fathers of cyber-utopianism,...”
– Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs, 2011. (via carvalhais)
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Net Art 2.0 - So What?
Somewhat inflammatory presentation for my “Deathmatch” with Lindsay Howard at Flux Factory, Oct 8, 2011. I’m not usually this confrontational, keep in mind it was supposed to be a deathmatch after all. I don’t mean to denigrate any of the artists mentioned, they were just unfortunate enough to end up getting mentioned as part of my efforts to hammer out a dialectical...