Flash on the Beach (FOTB) ‘09 As promised, here is a link to my slides + lecture notes. It took longer than expected due to reasons: 1) it was my turn to sit next to the sick, coughing family on the flight back from London, where in turn I was sick for the better part of a week; and 2) I felt I needed to exploit the format of the slides by explicitly adding detailed notes to each one – a luxury that an hour presentation simply does not give you. Be forewarned, the notes are random thoughts and it is in a raw and early stage of research. The insights and conclusions I make might lead you in circles, or you might find a grain of truth that is worthy of further examination.
A YouTube Channel for Intelligent Video Art As I worked my way through several books on Cybernetic Art, Artificial Life Art and Genetic Art, I created a spreadsheet of the names, titles, urls, etc. of video art that continued to grow and grow and grow. I was able to include only a fraction of the video art within my presentation at FOTB, but I wanted to share the entire list with you.
To my amazement, a large number of quality, avant garde videos are available on YouTube. However, with the exception of the excellent MediaArtTube, most of the videos I found were not easily available, especially from an iPhone / iPod Touch. With that in mind, I would like to share with you a new YouTube channel: In The Mod: Video Art++.
The Vasulka Archives As much as it pains me to find out that a book I desire is out-of-print and unavailable, a void of greater size is created when the same is true for an important piece of video art. There were numerous times during my research for my presentation that I simply could not find relevant videos online. During a conversation I had with Simon from the Santa Fe Complex, he mentioned the Vasulka’s Archive. It turns out that from the late 60s the Vasulka’s have amassed an enormous collection of tapes, papers, videos, articles or magazines of avant garde related pieces for their archive. The archive consists of artwork from a variety of different artists who would donate their personal collection to the Vasulka’s for various reasons including the fact that they knew the Vasulka’s would take great care with their work.
We are fortunate to have Woody and Steina still with us and it is the perfect time to explore a relationship with a foundation to digitally archive this library so that it can easily be shared with future generations. With that said, if you know of someone with a track record of protecting artwork with the highest amount of integrity as well as funding such an endeavor, please let me know and I will forward their information on to the Vasulkas.
Hiatus
On a side note, I wanted to sincerely thank everyone who attended the conference as well as John and Joe for inviting me back for a 3rd year in a row. I feel at home when I’m in Brighton and I love seeing all of my friends again and celebrating this crazy, wonderful journey that we are on. John + Joe put together a conference that feels more like a functional family getting together to share with each other wonderful ideas. With that said, it is time for me to hibernate for at least a year from the conference circuit and focus my energy on creating artwork using the tools that I have created as well as hijacking existing features and functions from a worthy list of creative and mentally stimulating applications. I look forward to seeing you again at some point in the future, as much as I look forward to creating artwork that I would love to share with you.
Continuing on the conference tour, thanks to Daniel Schutzsmithnext up is the WDDC, aka Create Chaos ‘08 conference in Orlando, Florida on October 15th at 3:50 pm. With a focus on AIR/SWF Photoshop/Illustrator: What Happens When They Talk? we will explore the creative possibilities of two new tools in addition to the CS4 apps. I will also delve deeper into what the implications are for the textile/apparel, printing and publishing industries when we apply the rules of generative art/design with the tools we’re now able to create – in short, it’s time to redefine how we play this game. I hope to see you there.
It’s hard to believe but it’s time for Flash on the Beach! I’m bringing my daughter this time, so I will only be at the conference for the day of my presentation because she doesn’t want to miss too much school. ;)
I present on Monday at 11:30 am with a focus on transforming ideas-to-pixels-to-atoms. Following the flow of ideas-to-pixels and how my artwork comes to life on the screen, I will discuss two new Adobe tools that will make driving the CS3 & CS4 Creative Suites (CS) dramatically easier than previous methods. I will also explore automating Maya via code and integrating it with the CS apps. I’ll wrap things up with how-tos on different options for converting your pixels-to-atoms: using innovative printing techniques that allow you to print to any substrate from your inkjet printer, laser cutting/etching and more.
Hope to see you there.
Update: As a side note, for my early experiments driving the CS apps via code, I used ExtendScript ToolKit (ESTK) – as simple ExtendScripts (ES) to begin with and then with embedded swfs that could communicate through the ES. When Apple’s Leopard was released, Apple changed how the windows, including the swf palettes, redraw and this made swf palettes unusable in CS3 apps. Luckily, Adobe and specifically Michael Daumling and Bernd Paradies were already working on the follow-up to ESTK. With the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, it made perfect sense to combine some of the great technologies and out of that came Adobe SwitchBoard and PatchPanel. Both are SWC libraries for Flex Builder, the former allows an AIR app to communicate to the target CS app, the latter enables a swf palette/panel to communicate to the host CS app. SwitchBoard is available here and PatchPanel will be released at some point in the not-to-distant future.
I still recommend playing with ESTK because it’s easy to get up and running because the code feels like JavaScript and ActionScript 1 and it’s free if you have any CS3 app installed. Get to know the DOM (eg., in ESTK Help > Adobe Photoshop CS3 Object Library) of the CS app you’re interested in developing for and how to set/get different values, like the name of a layer.
Using ESTK is a simple stepping stone to developing AIR apps with Flex Builder and SwitchBoard – which brings the code up-to-date with current standards, such as strict data types, code hinting, etc. For all of the demos I did that involved AIR apps, I used Flex Builder and SwitchBoard exclusively, including the color apps for In The Mod.
I love accidents. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was working on a set of algorithms that automatically “generate the shape of the body, deform it and then skin it.” While I was deep in the code, I made a typo and wham! Each skin component rotated. Hehe.
With that in mind, I have a script that extracts the audio amplitude data from an audio file in After Effects that I sculpted into a format that would be compatible with some code I have in Maya which connected the dots.
As the light shines through each hanging kinetic art piece, a color shadow of the printed acrylic design on the surface of each seed of the dandelion falls on the nearest wall. Spinning around to a light breeze, the added dimension of movement is added to the experience.
For the best experience, hang the ~ 6″ in diameter art piece in a place where sunlight will shine through it and a breeze will gently blow it. The string and hook to hang each dandelion is included.
Each kinetic dandelion art piece is sold separately as an individual piece, however you can buy as many as you want.
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