OFFF BCN: Hansol Huh – TypeDrawing / James Tindall: Sketchpad

The OFFF festival in Barcelona is next week, with a busy schedule mixing new media design heros with computational designers and generative artists. The EXTEND: Advanced Processing workshop has been mentioned here before, now the organizers have finally released the full list of projects for the exhibition.

Entitled “Drawing / Painting / Sketching”, this year’s exhibition has a focus on software works that emulate drawing processes. It might seem ironic that digital artists should spend so much time trying to recapture the quality of traditional drawing, but this is not necessarily out of nostalgia. The goal is ultimately the creation of organic expressions within a deterministic medium, with a richness of gesture often lacking in digital work. The last few years has seen a definitive move away from the technology-inspired images of the turn of the millenium, with complex animated works created through the use of computational processes coming to the fore.

The resulting works are nevertheless quite different both in style and focus – from C.E.B. Reas’ complex process drawings, to Hansol Huh’s playful TypeDrawing, to Leonardo Solaas drawing machine Dreamlines. Joshua Davis will be doing a workshop in the museum using his drawing components for Flash, while Zach Lieberman’s Drawn and Hektor, the Graffiti Output Device provide interactive installations moving beyond the screen.

It looks like OFFF will be an interesting mix this year, be sure to have a look at the timetable for a full overview of the events, including the conferences which in true Barcelona fashion run until 21:00 in the evening.

Soda: SodaPlay 2.0

Soda has released a mock-up of SodaPlay 2.0 (see blog here and here). It’s over on dev.sodaplay.com, and gives a pretty good idea of how the new system will work when fully functional.

Most exciting for SodaPlay enthusiasts should be the links to functional new style SodaPlay applications (see image above). These launch under Java Webstart, and require Java 5.0. Playforge.net and a discussion forum about SodaPlay 2.0 are also online.

And if you’re a true Soda fanboy, you can follow the exploits of the Soda creative team documented on the soda creative Flickr pool, of which Alexander Kohlhofer aka Plasticshore is the most prolific contributor.

Call for proposals in Paris and São Paulo:

Soda: Screenshots of SodaPlay 2.0 Beta (Flickr)

As mentioned in the previous post about Soda, there are some interesting new SodaConstructor developments in the works. While talking to the Soda crew in London a few weeks back I was lucky enough to get some details.

From its launch in 2000, the popularity of the SodaConstructor project exceeded all expectations. It was intended to be a simple experiment with Java, spring dynamics and meccano-like creatures, but quickly became a runaway hit with mentions in fashion magazines and the popular press. Something about SodaConstructor gets to people. You can call it the LEGO effect or draw parallels to the popularity of "god games", but put simply SodaConstructor is just good clean fun.

Today, SodaConstructor has over registered 200 000 users that can save their creations and show them off to others. The site sees over 200 000 visitors per month, many of whom are temporary visitors. For some users SodaConstructor has become both a serious hobby and an arena for research. There are even user-run community sites like sodaplaycentral, with serious articles on how to build "amoeba" type creatures and the workings of Multiple Stiffness Springs.

SodaPlay 2.0: The community. At first Soda was unprepared for the popularity of the project, and had no time to support or develop it further. A simple but much-needed mechanism for saving user models was added, and allowed for the Sodazoo. In 2002 SodaRace was released thanks to external support. It provided a XML file format for models, making it possible to automate model design through AI and alife strategies. With a nod to Karl Sims’ classic Evolved Virtual Creatures, SodaRace uses the metaphor of a race to evaluate the ability of different models to navigate a random terrain. It became a hit with the AI and engineering community.

Now, with the generous long-time support of NESTA Soda are working on combining the popularity and simplicity of SodaConstructor with the advanced functions of SodaRace. The result will be SodaPlay 2.0, which will combine community functions (think Flickr, with galleries, comments etc) with a XML application framework called Playforge for creating models as well as modifying the SodaConstructor environment itself. SodaPlay 2.0 is scheduled for launch sometime in the near future.

The details of the APIs and framework are still being worked on, but users will be able to customize the interface of the Constructor enviroment as well as the physical simulation being used. These modifications can be saved as “Extensions” and shared with other users. Like with SodaRace, a web API will allow communication and uploading to the SodaPlay server, so user-written applications can be used to contribute to the environment.

Other ideas like a SodaConstructor screensaver which automatically downloads models for display are in the works. As with any service, opening SodaConstructor up to users through APIs and standard file format could potentially transform how the tool is used and what results that can be produced. Constructor heads should have exciting times indeed.

I have asked the SodaPlay team to give a short explanation of PlayForge and future functions, I will post that in a follow-up when I get it.

OFFF Festival, EXTEND : Advanced Processing Workshop

Barcelona is always a nice place to be, but the upcoming second week in May may hold particular interest to creatives working with digital media. The reason is the OFFF festival for "Post-Digital Creation Culture". Now in its fifth year, OFFF has moved away from its Flash-oriented roots and embraced the full spectrum of experimental digital work. According to the festival site, OFFF is exploring “software aesthetics and new languages for interactive and visual expression.”

The festival’s biggest pull is probably the presentations by a core of well-known creatives, with names like Kyle Cooper, Weworkforthem, Nando Costa and many more. This year the list is also conspicuously full of names from the computational design and generative art fields: Ben Fry, Golan Levin, Casey Reas, Marcos Weskamp, Zach Lieberman etc. It’s an interesting mix, and while the actual program of events hasn’t been announced yet there are sure to be some good presentations.

A special partner event of OFFF is the EXTEND: Advanced Processing Workshop. Co-produced by OFFF and Hangar (an art centre for the audiovisual arts), the one-week EXTEND workshop will be led by Ben Fry, Casey Reaz, Zachary Lieberman and Marius Watz. The workshop is intended for artists and designers who already know how to code, but who would like to experiment with new topics, learn how to extend the Processing tool itself or just play around in a constructive environment.

The workshop fee is set at a low EUR 50, so it should be accessible to freelancers without design agencies who can bankroll them. The number of places are limited, however. To be accepted, applicants must submit a personal biography and a description of previous experience with Processing.

Application deadline is 21 April. See the following call for more information.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

Quote from Krome Barratt’s Logic & Design in Art, Science and Mathematics

Just came across Krome Barratt’s wonderful Logic & Design in Art, Science and Mathematics. The book outlines ideas somewhere between art, design and science, applying semi-scientific evaluations to aesthetic issues. The quote above jumped out:

Now, if only life was that easy.

Hudson-Powell: Luke / Jody / Sketches

Brothers Jody and Luke Hudson-Powell have been on my to-see list after their excellent Responsive Type project last year. Their Shoreditch studio is a modest space shared with friends, constituting a miniature creative community. Like many small design studios they are expert collaborators, teaming up where necessary.

Hudson-Powell’s portfolio is quite varied, featuring print work, graphic identities, motion graphics and interactive work. While at home in digital media, they also use drawing and found objects in their work, giving it a playful lo-tech feeling. They often use a system-based approach, following a British tradition of conceptual graphic design. Their cover for SHIFT is an excellent example. Here they used found objects to spell out the word SHIFT for a webcam, changing the image gradually over the scope of a month.

Hudson-Powell: Shift Cover / Responsive Type / Barbican

Luke and Jody are not hardcore coders themselves, although Jody did attend the MSc Virtual Environments course at Bartlett, learning VRML and C++. Following the Responsive Type project, they have recently continued their code-based exploration in a set of illustrations for the Barbican classical music programme. Working with V3ga and Michael Zancan (both of whom were involved in Responsive Type), they developed a tree-like system which grows in real-time based on audio input. The project was based on V3ga’s Vision Factory platform. The final output is a series of illustrations based on classical music, for use in the Barbican’s printed material, banners etc.

Hudson-Powell links

• Hudson-Powell (make sure to look at their portfolio PDF and showreel)
• SHIFT Interview
• Responsive Type

London views: National Theatre, Dan Flavin retrospective, Rachel Whiteread

I am passing through London on my way back from the AV.06 festival and using the opportunity to meet up with the London scene. Last night saw a very pleasant gathering of Tom Carden, Karsten Schmidt, Andreas Müller (who turns out to be Swedish / Finnish, not German as one might suspect), Christian Giordano, Ed Burton and more.

A London Flickr set is already up, more blog posts to come.

Things seen:
Tate Modern: Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment installation
Hayward Gallery: Dan Flavin retrospective

Relevant books purchased:
Alex Coles: Design Art
Frances Follin: Embodied Visions. Bridget Riley, Op Art and the Sixties
Eye Magazine #58 (it has an article on the “decriminalization of ornament”)

Joshua Davis: Z4byJD. Left: The prints (details). Right: The car, the artist.

Joshua Davis is at it again. This time he was commissioned by BMW to do a series of prints based on their new Z4 Coupe, in what could be considered a followup to the BMW Art Cars. The result is Z4byJD, consisting of a limited series of unique generative prints and a rockstar-style web site documenting the process.

The Z4byJD site, while highly polished and well executed, verges on pure designer camp. The site’s intro sequence begins with the payoff “The most radical artist… takes on the most thrilling BMW”, set to a rock/hip hop soundtrack. Davis is shown posing thoughtfully kneeling by the car in a clean showroom, inspecting every line of the car while the camera makes much of his famous tattoos.

Once past this curious opening, visitors can enjoy some generative graphics courtesy of Davis, and a “making of” video that threatens to become even worse than the intro, but miraculously saves itself at the last minute. After a frenzied start, it calms down and has Davis speaking with the soft-spoken Chief Designer Adrian van Hooydonk. The rock guitars give way to pleasant ambient music and talk about lines, light and surfaces. Joshua Davis explains his generative work processes, and the BMW heads make a comeback explaining their support for experimental art.

So despite Davis’ coarse initial quip about the car’s “sexy ass”, the video suddenly becomes plausible high-class BMW branding. This is a luxury car they’re selling, after all.

The prints (shown in a Gallery section with curiously low resolution images) do not literally reference the Z4 Coupe, even if segments of the car are buried in the composition. The images follow the vein of the organic-feeling generative systems Davis show on Once-upon-a-forest, a look that he does very well. The work has an effortless organic quality to it, with great colors and composition. A single print (all unique) can be bought online for EUR 275, not a bad price for a 61 x 112 cm print (unmounted). Obviously, the selling of the prints is not the money-making part of the deal.

It’s interesting to see that BMW (or at least their ad company) think that promoting a new media designer slash electronic artist in this way will help them sell cars. Using artists to endorse luxury products is of course common-place, and the BMW Art Cars do set the precedence, but still this seems an odd pairing. Then again, maybe Joshua Davis really is the Eminem of new media.

Just for balance, here’s some alternative takes on the same project: MPH Magazine, Autoblog, Dexigner, Leftlane News. Make up your own mind, don’t listen to us.