01:03
John Maeda: Fireball
Here is an interesting John Maeda quote found over on Brian Steen's blog:
«My early computer art experiments led to the dynamic graphics common on websites today. You know what I’m talking about — all that stuff flying around on the computer screen while you’re trying to concentrate — that’s me. I am partially to blame for the unrelenting stream of “eye candy” littering the information landscape. I am sorry, and for a long while I have wished to do something about it.»
Now, the quote is from his book "The Laws of Simplicity", which gives some much-needed context. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting statement. Were it not for his status as a pioneer and his instrumental role in establishing the field of computational design, it would simply seem like hubris. In one simple statement, he not only takes credit for a field of work, but he also not-so-subtly implies that it has no value. That’s a tall order.
Even if one agrees with Maeda that the current interest in visual complexity is a bad thing, the whole debate around simplicity sounds strangely like the legibility wars of the 1990’s. Faced with digital typography that broke every rule and layered graphics that refused to obey any grid, the ruling masters of Modernism (including Maeda’s hero Paul Rand) denounced the new movement as style over substance – eye candy. However, the subsequent resurgence of Helvetica and diagonal grids showed that ultimately minimalism and maximalism are just styles, there for the choosing.
Maeda’s thoughts on simplicity are of course laudable, presenting a strategy for dealing with the difficulties of a technological society. But when applied to visual styles, it should be remembered that simplicity, like minimalism, can also be, well, boring. Not everyone likes their reality the same way.
Interestingly, the early work that Maeda seems to be disowning with the above statement is also the work his fame is built on. Compared to his more recent output such as the Nature series, the early pieces are visually much bolder and more vibrant. The sheer joy of form documented in his seminal Maeda @ Media book from 2001 seems strangely lacking in his newer works.
The derogatory term “eye candy” has plagued digital art since its inception, and has often been used to deride generative visuals in particular. It’s strange then to hear it used by an artist whose work is so firmly concerned with optical formalism. It seems much like throwing rocks while inside a glass house.
Still, a man should always be respected for trying to kill his darlings. We wish you luck, Mr. Maeda.
(Related reading: Mitchell Whitelaw: More is more: Multiplicity and Generative Art, Douglas Cedric Stanley: Complexity and Gestalt, The Cult of the Ugly)
23:40
Images from John Frazer's "An Evolutionary Architecture"
A post on the excellent Interactive Architecture blog reminds us that John Frazer’s classic book An Evolutionary Architecture" is downloadable as a PDF. Originally published in 1995 and now out of print, the book gives a fascinating history of experiments in computational architecture going back to the 1960’s. Frazer’s main interest is in the use of biological models in architecture, applying classic Alife models like cellular automata and genetic programming to spatial problems.
Given its age and that it was already a retrospective account when it was released, the historical perspective is one of the best aspects of the book. But this also means that many of the concepts are presented in a somewhat outdated way. Frazer’s approach to architecture is rather dry and academic, and his text can tend towards the bombastic. Still, the way he combines 1960’s utopian belief in systems with modern technology gives food for thought.
(In all modesty, there was a Generator.x post about the book all the way back in 2005.)
03:28
Boredomresearch: f.wish / Leonardo Solaas: La Mosca 2
I have just returned from the Norwich International Animation Festival (NIAF), where festival director Adam Pugh had been courageous enough to present generative art and kinetic sculpture as part of the festival. Interestingly, the claim “I am not an animator” was often heard during the festival, pointing perhaps to a problem of positioning versus an old craft. The juxtapositions created by the festival made this dilemma all the more interesting, for instance as seen in the programme of abstract videos presented by Dietmar Schwärzler from Sixpack Films, with much of the work relating to the Austrian Abstracts blogged here recently.
Two panels on generative art were also presented. The first, chaired by Helen Sloan of SCAN, was an attempt at placing generative art in the context of animation. The panelists were Leonardo Solaas (creator of Dreamlines), Paul Smith Vicky Isley of Boredomresearch and myself. No real conclusion was reached, as none of the three participants would see their work as relating to conventional animation. Nevertheless, the inevitable time-based and performative nature of software does imply that ideas from animation could have an impact on the work.
The second panel (titled “Art on autopilot”) was organized by the Cambridge-based media arts organization Enter_, which will premiere a new international conference and festival next year. Geoff Cox acted as moderator, Geoff is an artist theorist who have written several articles on generative art and co-curated a generative exhibition called Generator. I spoke about the commissioned piece created for generating the festval identity visuals. Paul Brown talked about generative music, copyright and applications in music therapy (see this article). Finally, Dave Miller presented his work with creating an automatic approach to political cartoons. Here the practices of the participants were quite dissimilar, highlighting yet again the potential problems of the broad definition of “generative art”.
Quasar is an amazing film-based performance by artists Jürgen Reble and Thomas Köner, presented during the festival at the Norwich Arts Centre. The work starts off with a droning minimal soundspace and two juxtaposted 16mm film projections of crackly images that could be images off far-off star clusters. As it builds, a total of 6 projectors are activated (projecting in multiple directions) and enormous amounts of smoke pumped into the venue. The image is finally obscured, with the presentation transformed from a semi-traditional film to a kinetic space, where both sound and image become volumes rather than simple surfaces. The result was mesmerizing, and again points to the vision of the festival for including unconventional works.
The renowned London-based VJ group the Light Surgeons also presented a performance of integrated sound and visuals, with sampling being the dominant technique. The end result was a kind of video turntablism, as though a scratch DJ like Kid Koala had suddenly expanded to doing videos.
13:54
Esther Stocker: Ohne titel (painting) / Tina Frank: Chronomops (video)
The Austrian Abstracts
22.09.-15.10.2006, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam
The Austrian Abstracts is an exhibition of 27 Austrian-based artists, collected through their concerns with principles of abstraction while working in a wide range of media, from software to sculpture and painting. The show continues the investigation from the 2003 Abstraction Now at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, with several of the artists appearing in both.
As the title implies, the Austrian art scene forms a nexus for the show. Even though the participating artists are from different countries, many of them are based in Vienna or have a special connection to Austria. However, the point of the exhibition is not to establish a patriotic position. Rather, it takes as its starting point a renewed interest in abstract art, which could be clearly observed in the Austrian scene of the last 10 years or more.
As the work in the exhibition demonstrates, the new interest in abstraction became evident in work with video and digital media. From the mid-1990’s artists like Dextro, Lia, Tina Frank etc. began experimenting with code, creating mostly web-based works that dealt with generative systems. These works became popular with net audiences at the time, and were loosely seen as related to net.art even though they essentially were formal investigations. Gradually these works became recognized as a coherent movement, and many of the artists involved have since expanded beyond the web to work with installations etc.
This movement has been given the de facto title “Austrian Abstracts”, deriving from a series of screening programs of digital experimental video that first gathered many of the artists in the current exhibition. Counting Abstraction Now, the show at Arti et Amicitiae is thus the third manifestation. Curator Norbert Pfaffenbichler has effectively become the chronicler of the movement, giving the works a framework in art history even as the artists themselves often refuse to comment on their conceptual aspirations.
Read also:
23:38
From BibliOdyssey: George Crumb: Makrokosmos I / Barry Guy: Bird Gong Game
BibliOdyssey is a wonderful blog that deals in archive images from obscure sources (usually old books). Typically, it presents old scientific diagrams, pattern samples, anatomical studies, ancient maps or just anything that has a strong visual attraction combined with a sense of the obscure and arcane. All told, it is a delightful image resource for anyone with even a slight sense of the magical.
Today’s post on the visual context of music is of potential interest to Generator.x readers. It deals with unconventional visual forms of musical notation, from the illustrative to the conqrete, from the ancient to contemporary. It should prove intriguing and well worth the time to indulge in both the images and links provided.
14:44
Vague Terrain: Jeremy Rotzstain / Paul Webb
The online digital art journal Vague Terrain launched Vague Terrain 03: Generative Art last week, featuring work by 11 artists and musicians. Edited by Greg Smith and Neil Wiernik, Vague Terrain asks contributing artists not just for works (images, videos, mp3s), but also to articulate the context those works exist in. The final result is both artistically challenging and theoretically weighty.
This issue explores generative strategies in art, an approach to image production as well as for sound and live performance. From the abstract images of Meta to the image producing machines of Jeremy Rotzstain or the random music systems of Paul Webb, the works presented show a range of possible uses of generative systems. Of special interest are the many examples of sound works. Lately the generative art field has gotten most of its attention for visual art, belying the rich history of such systems in musical composition.
The most important theoretical contribution is a new paper from Philip Galanter, in which he clears up some common misunderstandings about his by now canonical definition of generative art (see this interview). Entitled Generative art and rules-based art, it traces a genealogy of generative art, presenting a number of historical works that are generative without being computer-based. Specifically, he looks at two exhibitions (Logical Conclusions: 40 years of rule-based art at Pace Wildenstein, New York and Beyond Geometry at Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Using these as a reference point, he clarifies some often-misunderstood terms and analyzes how the works in these shows can be understood in relation to a generative tradition.
Vague Terrain: meta / Ben Bogart
Galanter’s presentation of these precedents is thorough. In focusing on the principles used to produce the works, he presents a firm platform for defining a basic terminology. The downside is that his paper does little to connect the aesthetic content of historical works to the works typical of the generative art field today. This is both a strength and weakness. In looking only at a limited formal aspect, Galanter avoids getting bogged down in art history. He can thus compare works that would otherwise be seen as representatives of different art movements. But in doing so, he risks giving the impression that a work like Alfred Jensen’s The Apex is Nothing is concerned with the same issues as Salavon’s Shoes, Domestic Production 1960-1968.
This dilemma clearly illustrates the problem of generative art as a definition that only describes a methodology. Apart from identifying an interest in systems, it says nothing about the resulting work and so constitutes a tenuous common link. Uncritical use of the term risks conflating artists from different periods and assuming that their artistic interests are the same, when in fact the contexts in which they produce their works are very different. Philip Galanter is no doubt aware of this, and likely does not intend to make this implication. But the recent historicization of generative art has tended towards ignoring differences in the desire to find similarities.
Finding historical references for generative art has the potential effect of legitimizing the current work by placing it in an art historical context. But it also risks ironing over the unique qualities of works. In the long run, the current generation of artists working with code and software as artistic materials might do well to specify their position as being separate from this historical context. This would allow them not only to state what is unique about their work, but also to be understood by the art world at large as more than an updated appendix to work done in the 1960’s.
All texts from Vague Terrain are under a Creative Commons license and are available for download as PDFs.
15:47
Nostalgia can be distracting, particularly the “good old days” variety that makes one feel things used to be so much better. But when Emigre launches a redesign of its web site (the first in 9 years – yes, that’s 1997) it’s hard not to feel at least a pang. A lot of Generator.x readers probably know the Emigre story, but here’s a short history lesson for those who don’t.
Although it was always the Emigre fonts that paid the bills, it was Emigre Magazine that built the cult. Founded by Rudy VanderLans and first published in 1984, it finally closed with issue 69 in 2005. Always uncomprisingly dedicated to eclectic visions and new voices in graphic design, it concerned it self with a theoretical and subjective approach to design.
Emigre was declared public enemy #1 by much of the design establishment of the 80’s and 90’s. Its unpopularity had several causes. Emigre openly embraced computers as design tools and digital artifacts like pixels as new design elements in their own right. This put them in the midst of the “desktop publishing” controversy, which would eventually cause the obsolescence of professional typographers. More importantly, Emigre championed postmodernist and deconstructivist design experiments, and became a soapbox for new ideas coming out of schools like Cranbrook and Calarts.
Emigre’s willingness to showcase stylistic exercises that explored “form as function” rather than “form follows function” was an affront to Modernist schools of thought. But by the mid-90s Modernism was on the run, and the idea that a designer is merely a neutral translator of content was all but dead and buried. The Emigre revolution was soft, but irreversible. But nothing lasts forever.
With little to fight against, Emigre started losing steam towards the end of the 90’s. The internet took over as the most important influence on graphic design, and the excesses of postmodernism fell out of fashion. Emigre were among the first type foundries to have a web site and offer downloadable fonts, but it didn’t have such a good grasp on the new issues brought up by digital design. Some early computational experiments like the RandomFonts from Letterror, found space within the pages of Emigre Magazine. But web design as a field was largely passed by in silence.
The final issue (#69) features a collection of 69 stories by Rudy VanderLans, chronicling the trials and tribulations (but also successes) of Emigre Magazine. The font foundry remains one of the most important independent foundries out there, dedicated to solid typography with an eye for the curious and eclectic. Don’t miss out on Zuzana Licko’s fonts, including her lovely Puzzler pattern generator.
Related links
- Emigre essays, a collection of essays about Emigre.
- Collection of essays published in Emigre.
- The Cult of the Ugly.
- Wikipedia: Emigre magazine
13:56
Wednesday 7th of June – Saturday 10th of June
at Atelier Nord Oslo/Norway by Susanne Jaschko & Erich Berger
Free participation
[...]
Urban public space operates as an interface between the individual and the public. It is a highly social, political and economic space. Nowadays digital technologies are omnipresent in this space, employed as systems for communication, control and organisation. The use and application of these technologies have strongly effected our understanding, perception and behaviour of public and private spaces.
The workshop will deal with the public space as field of artistic expression. We will analyse the properties and conditions of public space and the potential for art responding to this specific environment. Special attention will be laid on art and design using the existing technological infrastructure.
Deadline: 19 May 2006
URL: Complete text of the call for participation
15:28
The ever-trusty del.icio.us/TomC feed brings news of a debate related to the Processing or Die thread a while back. A blog post over on Grand Text Auto about a lecture by C.E.B. Reas at the Human Systems | Digital Bodies conference has drawn some interesting comments about “procedural literacy” and discussion of general terminology.
Michael Mateas, associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, has posted a link to his paper "Procedural Literacy: Educating the New Media Practitioner" (PDF). In it he argues that a knowledge of computational processes (i.e. procedural literacy) is a requirement for anyone seriously intending to deal with the so-called “new media”. It’s slightly on the techy side of things, but has some interesting historical references (Papert, Kay, Nelson etc.) as well as some fresh takes on the basic problem of computing for the humanities. For instance, he proposes (writing) games as the perfect vehicle for understanding a procedural approach. Interestingly, another participant in the discussion, Ian Bogost, has a book out on MIT Press entitled Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism.
The idea of computational literacy extends beyond what is traditionally considered code. Our favorite Norwegian blogger heroine, Jill Walker, forced her electronic literature students to learn HTML and CSS in order to set up their own blogs. While HTML lacks any active computational component, it can still potentially hold a transformative experience in terms of understanding how computers “think”. Just ask all the Myspace kids.
And of course there is always the dogmatic Open Source view as to why you should learn to code: If you can’t hack it, it will control your life.
15:37
Pixelache 2006 in Helsinki will feature a seminar on art in a mobile context, supported by Nokia’s Connect To Art project and Sulake, developers of the famous Habbo Hotel.
Thursday 30 March, 1-5 pm, Kiasma seminar room
More information at:
http://www.pixelache.ac/2006/pikseliahky/seminar06
Featuring presentations from Sampo Karjalainen / Sulake, Atau Tanaka / Sony CSL Paris, Antye Greie + Sue Costabile / Minimovies and many others..
Participation fee is 250 euros. There are a few places reserved for artists / students / researchers without a participation fee.
Signing up and more information: send e-mail to seminar06@pixelache.ac latest tomorrow Wed 29 March!
The seminar is supported by Nokia Connect to Art and Sulake.
The program looks interesting, even if it looks a bit thin on the use of mobile devices as a computational platform. The delivery of video and sound over mobile networks is of course intriguing, but hardly revolutionary. Sulake’s presentation on “mobile virtual worlds” looks to be the exception.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Pixelache 2006 Helsinki program.
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