Just a quick note: Not being part of the whole design conference circuit (read sometimes: circus) I felt incredibly honoured to have just been invited to speak at the OFFF festival in sunny Lisbon next May, especially being part of such a line up (more speakers to be confirmed):
Apparently there are special super-early-birdie tickets available until end of November (not that I'm trying to convince you!)…
| There are only 2 days left until TodaysArt festival, my favourite arts festival, is taking place again this weekend in The Hague. Already having taken part in the festival under the umbrella of <>TAG's Information Aesthetics 2 Symposium last year, it'll be a slightly more architectural affair this year round… | Processing Light, an exhibition organized & curated by Maxalot, will be all about especially commissioned generative works applied as large-scale super highres projections (4725 x 7250 pixels) onto one of the walls of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM). |
| Using the existing ceramic tile grid of the building wall as defining structure for my own piece, I imagined the tiles to be exposed to some virtual internal force field and created a shadow map of the resulting protrusions and deformations. To ensure a level of patterning, the tiles were not just processed randomly but all interacted with one another to avoid any intersections. Using Sunflow for the rendering then added extra realism to the final outcome. Once overlayed and projected back onto the building this should then form a kind of temporary, suggestive augmented architecture. | The exhibition will be on every night on Friday & Saturday (Sep 26-27). Other invited artists to the show include: Neil Banas, Dextro, Tina Frank, Eno Henze, LIA, Pedro Mari (Defetto), Quayola, C.E.B. Reas, Jim Soliven, Marius Watz, Mike Young. Please see the Maxalot site for further information. Also, a more detailed documentation and images of the whole event will follow next week. If you're in The Hague this weekend, please do get in touch. |
VROM (via minbuza.nl)
A byte is the basic unit of measurement of information storage in computer science. In many computer architectures it is a unit of memory addressing, most often consisting of eight bits. A kilobyte (KB) is made up of 1,024 bytes. A megabyte (MB) is made up of 1,024 × 1,024 i.e. 1,048,576 bytes… Byte
| Will Wright's Spore game was finally released 3 weeks ago and I still need to find some time trying it out myself. I've been closely following the development of this ground breaking game, not only because it'll hopefully introduce a large number of kids (and adults) to the core concepts of evolutionary theory and see them applied in practice (important in a time where Intelligent Design is being pushed in schools instead), but also because much of the game is based on generative & procedural techniques. | This systematic, rule based approach to game design has never been applied to such an extent and level of detail before. The 2006 video below is a conversation between Will Wright, Brian Eno and Stewart Brand (another hero of mine) about the the application and implications of different generative techniques in a wide variety of creative applications. It also has a part where Will demonstrated an early prototype to explain the core ideas of Spore… Highly recommended viewing! |
| Another interesting thing about Spore is that in order to realise & implement many of his generative ideas, Mr. Wright employed a large number of people with a background in the demoscene. The videos below should be testament to the incredible talent and skills present in this art subculture & community, still largely outside (by choice) of the spotlight on the usual generative art scene. Maybe this has to do that evolution and competition have always been core ingredients of the demoscene, and yes, more than often technical feats have been in that cultural foreground. Yet I think the sheer compression ratio of ideas achieved & required by many demoscene productions is a highly creative feat in itself, which should not be underestimated. This is especially true for the extremely low file size limits of some demo competitions. | Below I've selected some outstanding recent productions of the 4K category. Before viewing the videos below please remember that each entire piece (visuals & audio) is generated in realtime and its filesize is 4096 bytes (4KB) or less. Compared to the already compressed filesize of the videos the original realtime versions still are 2000-3000 times more efficient whilst being able to be reproduce itself at much higher resolutions without any additional cost. But whilst impressive, it's not even the filesize that really matters here. The important distinction is that these media are generated dynamically and the software just contains the necessary configuration and rules for reproduction. The small filesize then just helps this reproduction, i.e. in the case of Spore, an entire species' generative “DNA” fits into the header of a small image file which can easily be shared with others. |
Texas by Keyboarders (2008)
download realtime version at Pouet.net
Receptor by TBC (2008)
download realtime version at Pouet.net
Atrium by TBC & Loonies (2008)
download realtime version at Pouet.net
Nucleophile by TBC & Portal Process (2008)
download realtime version at Pouet.net
Kindernoiser by RGBA (2008)
download realtime version at Pouet.net
Since I've done a fair bit of travelling of late and often been listening to some (not as often) interesting talks on the plane, I wanted to share some of the more inspirational gems with you…
Whilst on a visit in Paris earlier this year, a friend of mine has introduced me to the Mimetic Desire theory created by René Girard, who fundamentally claims that all human behaviour is learned and learning itself is based on imitation. Initially using examples from literature, the theory then also introduces and explains the Scapegoat mechanism as a result of this constant universal imitation and the competition and rivalry caused by copying desires from each other…
On a related note, Susan Blackmore has come to the field of Mimetics via the Darwin/Dawkins connection and applies & extrapolates some evolutionary thoughts to memes in this TED talk below…
Susan Blackmore: Genes, Memes & Temes
In the comments section on the TED site, I also found another interesting article series mentioned applying the concept to software (as the 3rd replicator): Software Physics.
So Semi-Permanent 2008 is all over and much fun was had. To summarize the event in one word: Inspirational. But a more detailed debrief of the event is coming…
I just wanted to inform any of the interested Auckland people, that The Church, organizers of Semi-Permanent, Joel Gethin-Lewis and myself will be holding a little spontaneous interactive media workshop tomorrow AM. But hurry, places are limited and we can only accept the first 20 people who RSVP. More details on their blog.
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