Smart Phone Demographics Infographic

Created by: Liz Lefebvre

A Series Showcasing Real-Life Examples of Art Meeting Code (Part 4 of 4)

Choosing the final installment of this series was difficult. We had a lot of strong contenders: a pro bono event that brought designers and programmers together, a young adult novel about cryptography — even the classic video game, Myst.

Instead, we chose to feature a tool that literally involves art meeting code — Creative Commons, a way for artists to share their work on their own terms, while still retaining copyright:

Creative Commons “Wanna Work Together” from Ryan Junell on Vimeo.

It’s a simple piece of HTML that anyone can post into their own website or blog, and it spells out in plain language exactly what uses are permitted and permitted — for instance, noncommercial use, use with credit, derivative works or “remixes,” etc.

Sample Creative Commons License

It makes the implementation of a complex legal idea elegant, simple, and practical — a triumph of usability. More than that, the Creative Commons license was inspired by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) — the DNA of software’s Open Source Movement. You could say that Creative Commons was a very successful attempt to “port” the core concepts and principles of Open Source from the platform of software and engineering to new platforms of creative authorship (books, film, music, and visual art forms, among others).

The Internet economy is driven by content, yet artists and content creators are consistently at the very bottom of the food chain. From the likely demise of net neutrality to YouTube’s recent decision to block content from independent music labels, we are reminded that censorship does not need an authoritarian government to take hold — a corporate regime will do just fine.

Why might a license that allows free sharing be a step forward for artists? Because artists can reach a wider audience, while still retaining copyright and control of their own work. Specifically, they can negotiate better terms for commercial reuse of their work — for instance retaining rights to print, film, or television for a manuscript distributed online.

Artists who have released work under a Creative Commons license include Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and Randall Munroe, creator of the popular xkcd online comic.

Says Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother (Tor Teen, 2010),

“For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy…

The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper.”

A Series Spotlighting Real-Life Examples of Art Meeting Code (Part 3 of 4)

Peter King has been experimenting with fractals since the mid-1980s. Many of his designs take their input from nature and from human interaction — in the form of video camera inputs or a “Spirograph” style user experience — rather than from a fixed mathematical starting point. He invented a process to create fractals purely from video camera feedback — no computer necessary!

What is a fractal?

Forms that exhibit scalar self-similarity, combined with the fact that in-folding greater detail increases the measure of the geometry: The more convoluted a (one dimensional) line gets, the more it approaches filling a two dimensional plane, so the line exists in a fractional dimension, hence, fractal. Romanesco and Buddabrot are among my favorites.

What got you interested in fractals?

Growing up, I loved to draw from my imagination and from life. As a senior in High School (1982), I was seduced by computer graphics, and wrote little programs on Apple II written in Basic. There was no command for a circle, so found out how sine & cosine are used to draw a circle with a for loop. It was all Euclidean geometry: First spirals and spirographs, then wrote a 3D wireframe program in Basic. But with all that focus on euclidean geometry, my drawings were getting really geometric, and I began missing the organic feel of natural structures.

Then in college a friend sent me an article on fractals and the mandelbrot set, and I was attracted by the psychedelic appeal, but also liked how well they described organic structures algorithmically. My math skills weren’t apt for fractal math, so I would draw fractals to help myself understand them. Just out of college I watched a NOVA episode on fractals and chaos theory, which gave a very simple description of how to draw a Sierpinski triangle, so after watching I went to my Amiga and wrote a basic program to do it, and then began tweaking the variables to see how it changed the fractals.

A couple years later, I was experimenting with video feedback. I really liked observing how it behaved similarly to cellular automata: There was chaotic emergence guided by recursive rules. I think the universe creates in a similar way, so engaging in creative process this immediate and responsive manner feels to me like collaborating with nature. Well, in these explorations, I wondered what would happen if I split the camera signal and sent it to two monitors. While I set things up, I realized it would make fractals, which was a very exciting realization. I refined the video fractal process by putting one video monitor behind a window, with the reflection of the second monitor superimposed. This creates very specific IFS fractals, but they pulse and throb with color and texture. Truly simple shamanic interactive television 🙂

When digital desktop video arrived, I switched to that medium, making versions with Max/MSP, Quartz Composer, and Flash. When the iPhone came out, I built a multitouch table, where the fractal is directly manipulated with multitouch gestures on affine transforms.

What preparation/skills did you need to acquire for these projects?

Programming skill progression: Basic, HyoerTalk (Hypercard), Flash Actionscript 3, Nodal noodle programming, such as Max/MSP, Pixelshox, Quartz Composer. Presently: HTML5 / css3 / javascript

Why create artwork that takes its inputs from outside phenomena (variables found in nature, interpolated by mathematical equations) rather than directly from the artist’s imagination?

I am fascinated by how nature designs, and by studying and imitating these processes, I feel like I am co-creating with nature.
Use the links below to check Peter King’s fractals — or make your own!

A Series Spotlighting Real-Life Examples of Art Meeting Code (Part 2 of 4)

Ironic T-shirts are nothing new. But what if you took the human element completely out of their creation and selection? That’s what Brighton-based artist Shardcore did with his collection of “Hipster Bait” algorithmically-generated T-shirts for sale. A computer program selects the image and the text.  Consumers can then order the shirts online. A new shirt is available every day.

The first thing you will notice is that the words and images seem a bit “off.” The pictures don’t match the captions. That is by design.

But not by human design.

http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress/index.php/2014/04/30/hipsterbait1/
http://hipsterbait1.tumblr.com/
https://twitter.com/hipsterbait1

By Anna Nahmias, Media Intern

The Scratch programing language is a great example of visual/code collaboration. Targeted towards the younger mind, Scratch lets users create projects from animations to video sensing with little-to-no coding. Collaboration with Scratch doesn’t stop at design and code; it’s also collaboration with the creators, the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, and its users, like you and me. It’s people building off of each other’s knowledge and experience.

Credit: scratch.mit.edu

The interface has bright colors and building-block-coding. As mentioned on the Scratch about page, “Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively”¹. It would be amazing to see this software in middle school classes, perhaps a digital media or animation class. Then the student gets to decide what they want to focus on when considering colleges or even just a hobby.

The “inside” screen, or coding screen, of a project made with Scratch

Kids are smart. If you give them the tools they’ll figure it out. Maybe it’s the lack of pollution in both their minds and life. I suppose this idea could apply to us adults as well, if you give us the tools we’ll build it.

A quote from a Scratch user, “My 8-year-old brother and I have been active participants of the Scratch Online Community for over a year. I enjoy designing and programming games and animations with other kids, because different people have different skills, and when you work together, you can build a much better project than you can alone”².

Collaboration is key; you can only accomplish so much yourself.

¹http://scratch.mit.edu/about/

² http://scratch.mit.edu/info/quotes/