"If AARON is an artistic revolution, paintr is a Che Guevara t-shirt."
May 2005 Archives
My new web host don't support php5. paintr is written in, and more importantly relies on handy object-oriented libraries written in, php5. It doesn't look like many places support php5, so a bit of a rewrite is in order. I'm not happy about having to waste time doing this, but it shouldn't take too long.
This image is derived from Stream in the New Forest by dbphotos, and is therefore licensed under a
Creative Commons License
How I made this image.
I found a palette at colr called Scheme 5435 with the following tags: vermont, forest. and searched for those tags on flickr.
I found an image at flickr called Stream in the New Forest by dbphotos which had the tags brockenhurst, newforest, hampshire, may, 2005, and I traced that using autotrace.
I then applied the colr palette to the autotraced flickr picture in my own unique way to make this finished image.
I hope you like it!
This image is derived from P5287975 by Works of Art, and is therefore licensed under a
Creative Commons License
How I made this image.
I found a palette at colr called Scheme 6608 with the following tags: rhododenderon, pink, flowers, girly, barbie. and searched for those tags on flickr.
I found an image at flickr called P5287975 by Works of Art which had the tags flower, flowers, garden, iowa, and I traced that using autotrace.
I then applied the colr palette to the autotraced flickr picture in my own unique way to make this finished image.
I hope you like it!
See the entry "New Ward Video" on Loca Records's news page:
Low and high resolution versions available, and a full-resolution version at archive.org for remixing and sampling. It's licensed CC-BY-SA. Perfect.
More cool art projects from the excellent Corey Eiseman, creator of kollabor8:
http://www.archive.org/help/contrib-advanced.php
How to upload data and metadata to the archive.org repository programatically.
I may use this for paintr.
I've moved my site to a host that can handle running projects like paintr, and I've upgraded this weblog to wordpress.
I've converted my iBlog weblog using Agitprop, but there are problems with the conversion. I've fixed most of them, but some images haven't been moved over. I'll fix this tomorrow, and get a better theme then as well.
This image is derived from mmhhhh by duddu, and is therefore licensed under a Creative Commons License
Update: Fixed most of the agitprop problems, but accented characters have been converted to their nearest English equivalent. :-( New theme forthcoming...
Public photography becoming "illegal" in the US, via Copyfight :
Watch Where You Point That Camera.
When public places are out of bounds, and homes are flooded with device-disabling watermarked media, I suppose that will just leave nature as a free subject for representation. Unless "Monsanto" start policing the visual likenesses of their crops, or the colours you capture are too close to a trademarked hue.
In balance, some sanity:
Subway Photo Ban Scrapped.
Watch Where You Point That Camera.
When public places are out of bounds, and homes are flooded with device-disabling watermarked media, I suppose that will just leave nature as a free subject for representation. Unless "Monsanto" start policing the visual likenesses of their crops, or the colours you capture are too close to a trademarked hue.
In balance, some sanity:
Subway Photo Ban Scrapped.
Via Eyebeam :
http://kollabor8.toegristle.com/
Collaborative image streams. Yes, yes, yes. Now for an SVG (and/or XCF) version:
Manifesto of the Day.
http://kollabor8.toegristle.com/
Collaborative image streams. Yes, yes, yes. Now for an SVG (and/or XCF) version:
Manifesto of the Day.
This image is derived from Anamarie by rogue drone, and is therefore licensed under a Creative Commons License
How I made this image.
I found a palette at colr called Scheme 6536
with the following tags: red. And searched for them on flickr.
I found this image on flickr: Anamarie by rogue drone (which had these tags: sister, baby, red, anamarie) and I traced that using autotrace.
I then applied the colr palette to the autotraced flickr picture in my own unique way, and that's this image.
I hope you like it!
Processing is now at version 0.9, heading for a 1.0 release.
Context Free is an excellent shape grammar system.
Open Sound World is a more colourful PD.
And finally a more standard language:
PHP has surprised me with its simplicity and power. If you know Perl, C or JavaScript it's a no-brainer to learn.
Context Free is an excellent shape grammar system.
Open Sound World is a more colourful PD.
And finally a more standard language:
PHP has surprised me with its simplicity and power. If you know Perl, C or JavaScript it's a no-brainer to learn.
Output from paintr running as a local application:
paintr is not explaining itself very well at the moment, but that's palette "Scheme 6549" from colr with the tags "olive forest" applied to an image from flickr called "Buy more bovril!" by kid for today, licensed CC-BY-SA-2.0.Learning PHP was very easy, it's a Perly/Javascripty kinda language. And I'm amazed how quickly I've developed paintr in it. I wrote the scraper for colr, and there is a goof PHP API framework for flickr called Phlickr. autotrace is by shell calls, and I'm not even using WordNet yet. I need to decide whether to go for features or access first. I think it might be good to get this online sooner rather than later.
As well as Cohen's "Off The Shelf", I'm now thinking about Charles Harrison talking about observing the letter of Modernism rather than its spirit. And Warhol because of how it works. And, because of the subject matter paintr has chosen(!) here, Hockney. :-)
It would be good if I could find web services for: an ontology, autotrace, and possibly file conversion. Doing things locally is so passe!
It's always good to see people's work before they moved into code (Harold Cohen for example), and Chris's physical media work doesn't disappoint. You can see how his wonderful HTML work emerged from his core artistic concerns:
http://www.chrisashley.net/weblog/archives/cat_art_object.html
http://www.chrisashley.net/weblog/archives/cat_art_object.html
Which we already knew, but this is new research. Via Mindhacks:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050516/hl_afp/healthneurologyart_050516230927
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050516/hl_afp/healthneurologyart_050516230927
(Wark: representation -> expression.
Knowledge representation -> knowledge expression.)
Knowledge representation -> knowledge expression.)
paintr (nee Artomator)
Inspired by autodr and in response to Harold Cohen's "Off The Shelf".
Colour handling from Cohen's "Colouring Without Seeing".
I'm going to do this in PHP.
The procedure is:
Get colour palette from colr.
Expand colour name tags using wordnet.
Find matching image at flickr.
Posterise and autotrace image to SVG (autotrace).
Sort colours by brightness.
Choose light-to-dark or dark-to-light.
Add background colour box?
Colour image.
Serve as SVG.
Add log of concept expansion and matching as text (colour names, tags, wordnet expansion, flickr search string, matches, choice)
Inspired by autodr and in response to Harold Cohen's "Off The Shelf".
Colour handling from Cohen's "Colouring Without Seeing".
I'm going to do this in PHP.
The procedure is:
Get colour palette from colr.
Expand colour name tags using wordnet.
Find matching image at flickr.
Posterise and autotrace image to SVG (autotrace).
Sort colours by brightness.
Choose light-to-dark or dark-to-light.
Add background colour box?
Colour image.
Serve as SVG.
Add log of concept expansion and matching as text (colour names, tags, wordnet expansion, flickr search string, matches, choice)
removing the text makes this wonderfully composed photograph all but abstract:
http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/05/untitled_projec_1.html
Information Aesthetics is a good blog to watch.
http://infosthetics.com/archives/2005/05/untitled_projec_1.html
Information Aesthetics is a good blog to watch.
Negative space is one of the fundamentals of art... Via the ever reliable NewsGrist :
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2005/05/heated_mashouts.html
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2005/05/heated_mashouts.html
Free Culture Pong:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/mag_toc.asp
"The People Own Ideas"
"No They Don't"
"Yes They Do!"
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/06/issue/mag_toc.asp
"The People Own Ideas"
"No They Don't"
"Yes They Do!"
CC 2.5 License Draft: http://creativecommons.org/drafts/by_2.5.pdf
Paul Miller's "Rhythm Science" is a book about the history, the culture and the potential of remixing. Having read it now, I wish I'd picked it up earlier when I saw it at the ICA last year.
Miller finds the historical roots of remix culture in the history of the slave and immigrant classes of America, shows how the most avant-garde strategies of 20th century high art have passed into the DJ's toolkit, and explores how this continues and opens up the history of cultural expression in the digital age. And Miller's treatment of his own writing and his sources as a rhythmic mix of voices, from Marcel Duchamp to Grand Master Flash, Coldcut to Deleuze, brings his ideas alive in a way that would be lost in a more academic mode.
You'll have to filter out the page-count-doublingly-awful graphic design. But if you do, the reward is a text with a depth and richness that is belied by its free-flowing style. The big picture of a digital, remixable, rhythmic culture that this book paints and the points where it touches on aesthetics and art hisory (Miller is an artist as well as a DJ) will be of interest to artists as well as to musicians, and to anyone interested in the origins and potential of remix culture.
Highly recommended.
Miller finds the historical roots of remix culture in the history of the slave and immigrant classes of America, shows how the most avant-garde strategies of 20th century high art have passed into the DJ's toolkit, and explores how this continues and opens up the history of cultural expression in the digital age. And Miller's treatment of his own writing and his sources as a rhythmic mix of voices, from Marcel Duchamp to Grand Master Flash, Coldcut to Deleuze, brings his ideas alive in a way that would be lost in a more academic mode.
You'll have to filter out the page-count-doublingly-awful graphic design. But if you do, the reward is a text with a depth and richness that is belied by its free-flowing style. The big picture of a digital, remixable, rhythmic culture that this book paints and the points where it touches on aesthetics and art hisory (Miller is an artist as well as a DJ) will be of interest to artists as well as to musicians, and to anyone interested in the origins and potential of remix culture.
Highly recommended.
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2005/05/art_busters_mar.html
http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2003-12-03/cover.html
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/inde.htm
http://biz.usatoday.findlaw.com/intellectual_property/nolo/auntie/C4034BC4-E377-4EDD-8EBDC0BE81A27CB4.html
http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/riot_2003/joywar
http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2003-12-03/cover.html
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/inde.htm
http://biz.usatoday.findlaw.com/intellectual_property/nolo/auntie/C4034BC4-E377-4EDD-8EBDC0BE81A27CB4.html
http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/riot_2003/joywar
The site for the show Agile Process: A New Economy for the Digital Arts in Scotland:
http://www.agile-process.com/
The resources section has lots of useful Free Culture resources.
http://www.agile-process.com/
The resources section has lots of useful Free Culture resources.
Ben Dembroski's site, devoted to "Open Content" (i.e. Free) Art:
http://www.dembroski.org/
ArtHacking, the site for his PhD dissertation:
http://arthacking.org/php/index.php
Personally I'd take Stallman as a starting point rather than Raymond, but lots of artists seem to prefer Raymond. I don't know why... :-)
http://www.dembroski.org/
ArtHacking, the site for his PhD dissertation:
http://arthacking.org/php/index.php
Personally I'd take Stallman as a starting point rather than Raymond, but lots of artists seem to prefer Raymond. I don't know why... :-)
This is the book-length version of an essay that has appeared online in several versions over the last few years. A little red book in a clear acetate wrapper, the design is portentious and, with its grunge-type titles and drop caps, slightly irritating. The book consists of some four hundred numbered paragraphs in a dozen chapters.
It is a hacker manifesto, applying class analysis to intellectual property. It's about time someone did this. Brand and Big Media critiques like "No Logo" would have been so much better if they'd used the tools of class analysis that cultural studies' fashionable postures denied them. Wark is a Marxist, well a crypto-Marxist, so he has no such limitations. And this allows him to get to the heart of the matter from the word go.
Wark identifies a new "vectoralist" class as successor to the capitalists and pastoralists that have previously made up the ruling classes. He never really defines all his terms, but you get the hang of them as the book goes on.The vectoralists seek to dominate the production and distribution of information, creating a new kind of property; intellectual property. The vectoralists rely on the creative classes, the hackers, to hack new abstractions form nature to create new value, releasing nature's "virtuality". But intellectual property denies hackers the fruits of their labour, and so we see why hacking and intellectual property are at odds.
There's much, much more to Wark's investigation, but it emerges from, and supports the idea of, the vectoralist class's creation of and exploitation of the idea of intellectual property and how this is against the class interest of the creative class.
Wark comes to call for a recognition of shared class interest amongst the world's hackers (one that my own experience shows is lacking between hackers sat in the same room, never mind on different continents) and an expressive politics to escape the representative politics that is all to easily commodified by the vectoralists. He also shows how this shared interest has come about, and how all the productive classes (agrarian, industrial and technological) can benefit from and be of benefit to the Hacker class.
Any book that name-checks Art & Language and Rhizome in the endnotes can't be all bad, and despite the excesses of its design, its sometimes florid prose style and its occasional vagueness, "A Hacker Manifesto" isn't bad at all. In fact it's a watershed. The critique Wark provides is urgently needed, incisively argued and far-reachingly applied.
Hackers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your NDAs...
It is a hacker manifesto, applying class analysis to intellectual property. It's about time someone did this. Brand and Big Media critiques like "No Logo" would have been so much better if they'd used the tools of class analysis that cultural studies' fashionable postures denied them. Wark is a Marxist, well a crypto-Marxist, so he has no such limitations. And this allows him to get to the heart of the matter from the word go.
Wark identifies a new "vectoralist" class as successor to the capitalists and pastoralists that have previously made up the ruling classes. He never really defines all his terms, but you get the hang of them as the book goes on.The vectoralists seek to dominate the production and distribution of information, creating a new kind of property; intellectual property. The vectoralists rely on the creative classes, the hackers, to hack new abstractions form nature to create new value, releasing nature's "virtuality". But intellectual property denies hackers the fruits of their labour, and so we see why hacking and intellectual property are at odds.
There's much, much more to Wark's investigation, but it emerges from, and supports the idea of, the vectoralist class's creation of and exploitation of the idea of intellectual property and how this is against the class interest of the creative class.
Wark comes to call for a recognition of shared class interest amongst the world's hackers (one that my own experience shows is lacking between hackers sat in the same room, never mind on different continents) and an expressive politics to escape the representative politics that is all to easily commodified by the vectoralists. He also shows how this shared interest has come about, and how all the productive classes (agrarian, industrial and technological) can benefit from and be of benefit to the Hacker class.
Any book that name-checks Art & Language and Rhizome in the endnotes can't be all bad, and despite the excesses of its design, its sometimes florid prose style and its occasional vagueness, "A Hacker Manifesto" isn't bad at all. In fact it's a watershed. The critique Wark provides is urgently needed, incisively argued and far-reachingly applied.
Hackers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your NDAs...
When I was at Kingston Polytechnic in 1991/92, I stumbled across Propp's "Morphology Of The Folktale" in the library whilst looking for books on shapeshifter mythology, which started my interest in narrative representation systems and generative narrative. By 1995/96 I'd come up with a proposal for a complete system for distributed representation of narrative and the rendering of scene descriptions in 3D. The stories were even skinnable so you could be in a 1920s detective story and the other readers/players could be in a mediaeval fantasy. But I've never done anything with it, and whilst I keep scouring the net I don't think anyone else has done anything similar. I pitched the layout manager idea from the rendering system to one company but I just got blank looks. Which part of "allow your users to create their own environments with just a few commands, a few stock items and a few stock textures" didn't they get?
Enter Computational Narratology:
http://rejon.org/?p=29
a project to "theory and tools for new generation interactive media, to enable plots, metaphors, images, and so on to be generated on the fly, in response to user input".
It's vital that we move away from the monolithic games, stories and narrative media (TV & Movies) and towards a Free cultural repository of elements and arcs, and the systems to assemble them. Away from blockbuster economics and aesthetics to a genuinely popular/mass production of narrative.
This looks like a good step in that direction.
Enter Computational Narratology:
http://rejon.org/?p=29
a project to "theory and tools for new generation interactive media, to enable plots, metaphors, images, and so on to be generated on the fly, in response to user input".
It's vital that we move away from the monolithic games, stories and narrative media (TV & Movies) and towards a Free cultural repository of elements and arcs, and the systems to assemble them. Away from blockbuster economics and aesthetics to a genuinely popular/mass production of narrative.
This looks like a good step in that direction.
Checked in a few trivial changes to draw-something.
Checked in carbon-draw-something, a MacOS X full-screen version of draw-something. You need to add the code from draw-something to the directory to build it, hopefully I can hack asdf to find the code itself. It's based on Mikel Evins Bosco application framework.
Checked in carbon-draw-something, a MacOS X full-screen version of draw-something. You need to add the code from draw-something to the directory to build it, hopefully I can hack asdf to find the code itself. It's based on Mikel Evins Bosco application framework.
Checked in the latest additions.
Some code to handle the maths for checking for intersections.
Refactored window drawing and added a status line to the bottom left of the screen. Hopefully it can be used to fake up an emacs-style input minibuffer.
Some code to handle the maths for checking for intersections.
Refactored window drawing and added a status line to the bottom left of the screen. Hopefully it can be used to fake up an emacs-style input minibuffer.
I just created my first Wikipedia article:
AARON.
I've got an entry on Harold Cohen in the works and I need to make the OGL entry more NPOV.
Wikipedia really makes me think of A&L's Indexing projects of the early 1970s, as do folksonomies.
What is the artistic equivalent of an ecyclopaedia (Wikipedia) or an operating system (GNU) ?
AARON.
I've got an entry on Harold Cohen in the works and I need to make the OGL entry more NPOV.
Wikipedia really makes me think of A&L's Indexing projects of the early 1970s, as do folksonomies.
What is the artistic equivalent of an ecyclopaedia (Wikipedia) or an operating system (GNU) ?
FAVE - Free Audio & Video Event - Open Source Creativity - A User Event
Bristol, Saturday 20th August 2005
Exploring the creative uses of free audio and video software
http://www.fave.org.uk/
Bristol, Saturday 20th August 2005
Exploring the creative uses of free audio and video software
http://www.fave.org.uk/
A&L are back at the Lisson with new work, old films of performances with The Red Crayola, and a Karaoke bar.
Altogether now:
"Jackson Pollock was the artist of the Marshall Plan
He broke ice for artists when the Cold War began..."
What do you mean you don't know the words? Everone knows the words to "A Portrait of Lenin In The Style Of Jackson Pollock (Part I)"!
http://www.lisson.co.uk/CurrentShow/currentshowb.html
Altogether now:
"Jackson Pollock was the artist of the Marshall Plan
He broke ice for artists when the Cold War began..."
What do you mean you don't know the words? Everone knows the words to "A Portrait of Lenin In The Style Of Jackson Pollock (Part I)"!
http://www.lisson.co.uk/CurrentShow/currentshowb.html
The excellent Chris Ashley links to the excellent MANIK's essay on his HTML table work, and to various items regarding them online:
http://www.chrisashley.net/weblog/archives/week_2005_05_08.html#000785
Disclaimer: I helped edit the essay.
http://www.chrisashley.net/weblog/archives/week_2005_05_08.html#000785
Disclaimer: I helped edit the essay.
Creative Commons, Free Culture and Free Software: Workshop organized by LiquidCulture
Wednesday 1st June 2005, 5-7pm, Venue: room MB137 (Main Building)
Admission is free, but please register in advance at
Sharing, remixing and developing culture, ideas and communication - the Goldsmiths experience.
Convert Wiki code to LaTeX and PDF:
Wikibooks, from Wikimedia (the people who do Wikipedia). Free Culture books:
Free Culture portal:
I've mentioned The Libre Society before but there's now much more at their site, they've upgraded their manifesto, and they are building up to a show later in the year:
http://www.libresociety.org/
http://www.libresociety.org/
Tom's the instigator of the amazingly successful Remix Reading project and very active in Free Software & Free Culture advocacy.
Lots of good articles and research at his site here: http://www.tomchance.org.uk/
Lots of good articles and research at his site here: http://www.tomchance.org.uk/
Behind the hype of his DJ SPooky incarnation, Paul Miller is a cuttingly original thinker on art and culture, notably modernism and African-Diaspora culture. His essays are online at:
http://www.djspooky.com/articles.html
I particularly recommend his articles on Duchamp and Warhol, and his interview with Chris Ofili.
http://www.djspooky.com/articles.html
I particularly recommend his articles on Duchamp and Warhol, and his interview with Chris Ofili.
Links I need to tidy up to as part of making a coherent case for Free Art:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury_trademarks_t.html
http://www.advogato.org/person/jamesh/diary.html?start=191
http://woodenspoon.net/cat/intellectual_property_is_theft/
http://www.patentstyret.no/templates/Page____429.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/25/cadbury_trademarks_t.html
http://www.advogato.org/person/jamesh/diary.html?start=191
http://woodenspoon.net/cat/intellectual_property_is_theft/
http://www.patentstyret.no/templates/Page____429.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue
Update: Post pulled due to original story being fake. Whoops.
Update: Now I'm totally confused. I'll update this when I know what's going on. We'll see whether this post's title was right or not. :-)
Update: Right, story checking policy.
1. Check the original page, read all of it, check the design.
2. Check the site, evaluate the site name, read the front, about and copyright pages.
3. Google the site name and get the WHOIS information for the domain.
4. Google the author name.
5. If any of this causes you to think that the story might be a joke or a plant, drop it and inform your source.
Do this for any funny, ironic or major stories.
Update: Now I'm totally confused. I'll update this when I know what's going on. We'll see whether this post's title was right or not. :-)
Update: Right, story checking policy.
1. Check the original page, read all of it, check the design.
2. Check the site, evaluate the site name, read the front, about and copyright pages.
3. Google the site name and get the WHOIS information for the domain.
4. Google the author name.
5. If any of this causes you to think that the story might be a joke or a plant, drop it and inform your source.
Do this for any funny, ironic or major stories.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy has one or two things to say on the subjects of films made of popular books.
The film, it begins, will be nothing like the book. This is because a film is a succession of projected images and sounds whereas a book is pulped vegetable matter smeared with coloured hydrocarbons in patterns that may or may not make any sense to the average sentient being.
It continues in this vein for a while.
The original version of the article was more informative, and centred around the adaptation of the guide itself to a film, but that version contained too many complaints about poor visual editing and script editing, some possibly libellous anecdotes about one of the executive producers, and some tiresome recollections of the author's time working on the abortive project to turn the guide into a 3D adventure game at the turn of the 21st century.
However this was rather unfair, as despite NOKIA the film NOKIA starting out NOKIA poorly, it finds its feet on Vogsphere and builds to a genuinely effective and touching conclusion that works Douglas Adams's love of endangered species into the plot. The romantic subplots are quite bearable, and there is at least as much good as bad, if not more so. Hopefully a sequel will improve matters still further.
The film, it begins, will be nothing like the book. This is because a film is a succession of projected images and sounds whereas a book is pulped vegetable matter smeared with coloured hydrocarbons in patterns that may or may not make any sense to the average sentient being.
It continues in this vein for a while.
The original version of the article was more informative, and centred around the adaptation of the guide itself to a film, but that version contained too many complaints about poor visual editing and script editing, some possibly libellous anecdotes about one of the executive producers, and some tiresome recollections of the author's time working on the abortive project to turn the guide into a 3D adventure game at the turn of the 21st century.
However this was rather unfair, as despite NOKIA the film NOKIA starting out NOKIA poorly, it finds its feet on Vogsphere and builds to a genuinely effective and touching conclusion that works Douglas Adams's love of endangered species into the plot. The romantic subplots are quite bearable, and there is at least as much good as bad, if not more so. Hopefully a sequel will improve matters still further.
Via eyebeam :
Wide Open - Open source methods and their future potential
A report by the think tank Demos.
Wide Open - Open source methods and their future potential
A report by the think tank Demos.
