Bruce Sterling at Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign, Postdam

from the talk of Bruce Sterling on SPIMES

Coming through the convergence of technologies, are the Spime. 6 qualities distinguish them:

1- they are conceived and designed within a network,
2- they are given a unique (digital) identity distinct from the others,
3- they are physically fabricated as opposed to manufactured in a factory. They are not made until they are sold,
4- they can be tracked through technologies of geo-localization,
5- they can be searched out through network search engines,
6- they are designed for disassembling.

- then there's a 7th one: they leave an historical trace behind them, a valuable pool of metadata.

via WMMNA

Gillian Crampton Smith questioned by Boris Muller at Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign, Postdam

Boris Muller asking questions to Gillian Crampton Smith on the "craft of interaction design"

...It seems interaction design has become much more powerful in terms of creating prototypes. ..And those tools like Processing and Arduino, you can really do more than just static prototypes, you can really create experiences that really work. Do you really think it would be possible to have to ?$?$? evolve and really become craftsman that its able to go to a designer and say ok I would like to have this, and then they craft this?

I think one of the things that happened is because the pace of invention has been so rapid, and the technology is changing all the time that is very difficult for people to keep up with the craft, there isn't enough time that you need to get to the experience you need with the particular technologies. So I think that's one problem.

I think another thing is - to be a crafts-person you have to understand the medium, and that for us does mean understanding something about how the underlying technologies work. So I think there's an interesting er tension between a way of thinking that is more a program(er) way of thinking and a way of thinking that is more a holistic, if you like way of thinking, which is what traditionally the craftsman, designer, uses in their work, and I think we haven't resolved that yet.

That's probably because its so..... If we think of the web, Web 2.0 something really interesting has happened ..suddenly data becomes available, and kind of Flicker opens up an API, so just anyone can just create his or her very own Flicker viewer and I think if this would also happen in the physical world, a new way of...for design objects could emerge.

Yes, Well I think the whole thing of platforms - where a certain level of complexity is done for you, and then you can work on top of that. I think that web 2.0 is, in a way a lot of hype, but I think it has opened up a fantastic opportunity, really, to break the monopoly of Microsoft. (laughs) Im sorry if its one of your sponsors... But I think before it was very difficult for anyone to design new types of software because they just had such a grip on the market. But now I'm using a software on the web called 'Basecamp' and its been written by 3 people, and it suits me fine..so i think there's a tremendous opportunity for innovation again, just suddenly now, so I'm very excited.

Department of Experiment

1972 Department of Experiment (later known as the Department of Experimental and Electronic Art) at the Slade in 1972.

http://www.chart.ac.uk/chart2004/papers/mason.html

whatever happened to computer arts....

"...In general artists do not exploit or engage with the possibilities offered by real-time technologies. If artists do use new technologies, such as video or image processing, it is usually to produce the kind of static, unchanging object that can be easily accommodated in a museum or gallery."

Gere, Charlie. 2006. Art, Time and Technology. Berg Publishers Ltd.

old school computing

...1981 was also the year that IBM released the PC and, by the mid 80's affordable computers with lots of "user friendly" software were on the market. Ironically the art mainstream, who had never endorsed the work of the systems artists, fell over itself to accommodate the neat little postmodern appropriations that were created using digital darkroom software (and with a singular lack of consideration for the unique and intrinsic capabilities of the computational metamedium). Baudrillard said it was OK and postmodernism, in its guise as romantic self-indulgence, concurred.

(from  http://www.paul-brown.com/WORDS/EMERGENT.HTM)

Lecture of Peter Beyls

At work, Slade School of Art, University College London, Autumn 1977

from http://www.beyls.org

books which popped up:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/105-6968090-9349267?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=john+conway&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Game-Manfred-Eigen/dp/0691025665/sr=8-1/qid=1169722328/ref=sr_1_1/105-6968090-9349267?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Notes-Metalevel-Studies-Music-Research/dp/9026519753/sr=1-1/qid=1169722703/ref=sr_1_1/105-6968090-9349267?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/Act-Creation-Arkana-S/dp/0140191917

recourses which popped up:

http://linuxsound.jp/

http://linuxsound.jp/one-page.html

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/software/cm/doc/cm.html

http://www.audiosynth.com/

http://www.keyworx.org/

http://www2.siba.fi/PWGL/

follow up:

Edward Ihnatowicz - Cybernetic Scultures

http://www.senster.com/

http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/articles/ihnatowicz%20brochure.pdf

Computer Arts Society

http://www.computer-arts-society.org/page/index.html

The CACHe Project - an archive of pioneering British computer art

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hosted/cache/

Some interesting texts by Paul Brown about the history of Computer Arts.

http://www.paul-brown.com

ARTIST -INVENTORS - TESTING (a) PROCESS

Recently, I was reminded about the difference between a scientific process, design process, and an artist process when visiting again the show Flowers & Questions by Fischli & Weiss at Tate Modern.

One of their most famous works is a film, Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) and a series or related objects and photographs. This film exploits the 'chain reaction' or domino affect litterally in a scltural object, readymade ballet of explosions and precarious movements.

Look on YouTube for the original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K73ux73wddk

and some 'fan' versions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDudog6zF7k

the 'inspired' ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc

This film was famously brought in to the mainstream news after an advertising campaign for the car manufacturer Honda largely re-appropriated the concept with items of Honda car, but without any credit of course, leading to accusations of plaigarism.

That the way things go in the 'creativity' of advertising....

Anyway, back to the ingenuity of the artists.

Also showing in the Tate Modern installation of The Way Things Go literally in parallel was another film - the 'making of...' so to speak. Viewed on a screen next to the main film, Making Things Go by Patrick Frey shows the artists at work, making rehearsals and experimenting with the techniques used in the film.

Now to come to the point - what I found interesting; we see in this film a certain sequence - or event - being tested out repeatedly. As familiar in the finished film - tyres drop of a table and rolls over to a plank to make a see-saw and then to go on to touch another wood or wheel to make the next event/reaction. So Fischli or Weiss I don't know who is who drops the tyre of the table aiming for the ramp, it misses, and then repeats, it misses again, then repeats and so on - something like twenty times. Whilst the efforts go on and on and adjustments are made, the crowd of technicians or assistants (I dunno they wear blue overcoats) in the workshop grows and a sense of concentration falls on the tyre, plank and table. Finally a succesful action is produced - the tyre falls smoothly off the table over to the ramp - up it and down the see-saw and on... There is a large cheer from the

Thinking about it afterwards, and on my return visit, I became fascinated that this simple clip of artists at work (or play if you like) shows an example of the differences in process. As I said at the start, the scientific process, design process, and an artist process are different, and have different aims and outcomes. All are or can be experimental. But, it is quite intriguing to what this example and to think of a group of engineers thinking of how to solve this problem of how to drop the tyre and make it hit the point where it must fall to hit the spot on the ramp. My assumption is that they would work this out on paper or in a modelling software, something like that. So why do artists do this like that? Experimenting by doing - I guess that it is the way they now how. They either have a high degree of patience or have the notion that they must do it like that, they must practice.

Just keep doing it. And by this doing - this experimentation -this inventing - they find things.

I've used the film as an kind of contextual example at the beginning of starting classes in interactive media programming in the software Max/MSP, perhaps just because I like it, perhaps because its just fun to watch. Importantly it shows a flow of events, an anticipation of time, the use of materials, movement, interaction, sound, light, space all things important in interactive media. The chain reaction is not itself invoked in a graphical programmming langauge like Max/MSP but more so than in a syntatcical language like Java, C etc.

We can see a parallel between the flow of events, and the speeding up of time and the explosions and reactions of the materials.

So digital media is great and software like max and jitter and hardware devices enable us to manipulte all medias in may different ways.

But we have to think, without thinking to hard, and we have to try, without getting tired, to innovate and experiment, and see the way that the things will go.