├── notes ├── KineticSculpture │ ├── README.md │ ├── automata.txt │ ├── organizing.txt │ ├── wiener.txt │ ├── jacquet-droz.txt │ ├── haugeland.txt │ ├── agam.txt │ ├── tsai.txt │ ├── gabo.txt │ ├── seawright.txt │ ├── takis.txt │ ├── vaucanson.txt │ ├── arkin.txt │ ├── tinguely.txt │ ├── ashby.txt │ ├── moravec.txt │ ├── bury.txt │ ├── duchamp.txt │ ├── braitenberg.txt │ ├── force_fields.txt │ ├── ray.txt │ ├── moholy_nagy.txt │ ├── haacke.txt │ ├── rath.txt │ ├── schoffer.txt │ ├── krauss.txt │ ├── calder.txt │ └── burnham.txt └── Conservation │ └── rinehart_ippolito.txt ├── images ├── process-history │ ├── 2005-DAM.jpg │ ├── 2010-DAM.jpg │ ├── 2005-bank.jpg │ ├── 2006-seoul.jpg │ ├── 2008-panels.png │ ├── 2009-miami.jpg │ ├── 2012-sfmoma.jpg │ ├── 2005-bitforms.jpg │ └── 2008-bitforms.jpg ├── documentation │ ├── reas-documentation-1.jpg │ ├── reas-documentation-2.jpg │ ├── reas-documentation-3.jpg │ └── reas-documentation-4.jpg └── installation-os-x-10 │ ├── reas-install-login.png │ ├── reas-install-audio-devices.png │ ├── reas-install-sound-input.png │ ├── reas-install-sound-output.png │ └── reas-install-supercollider-volume.png ├── README.md ├── SevenEasyPieces.md ├── YesNo.md ├── Notation.md ├── ProcessHistory.md ├── ProcessCompendium.md └── ThoughtsOnSoftware.md /notes/KineticSculpture/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/REAS/studio/HEAD/notes/KineticSculpture/README.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /images/process-history/2005-DAM.jpg: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/REAS/studio/HEAD/images/process-history/2005-DAM.jpg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /images/process-history/2010-DAM.jpg: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | _Draft 16 January 2016_ 2 | 3 | 1. Statements 4 | 2. Variables 5 | 3. Conditionals 6 | 4. Loops 7 | 5. Functions 8 | 6. Objects 9 | 7. Arrays 10 | 11 | [More...] 12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /YesNo.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | ###YES NO 2 | 3 | Layers of original and appropriated instructions. 4 | 5 | *Stratum 1* 6 | 7 | Make a grid or find a grid. Do one thing or another thing inside each unit. 8 | 9 | *Stratum 1.1* 10 | 11 | Draw a uniform grid of 200 x 200 squares within 1 square meter. Open a telephone directory and read the numbers in order. For each square, starting in the upper-left corner, fill with blue paint if the number is even, fill with red paint if the number is odd. 12 | 13 | *Stratum 1.2* 14 | 15 | Draw a grid of 40 x 25 units. Find a coin and define one side as A and the other as B. For each square, starting in the upper-left corner, flip the coin. If it lands with side A up, draw a line from the lower left to the upper right. If side B lands up, draw a line from the upper left to the lower right. 16 | 17 | *Stratum 1.2.1* 18 | 19 | `10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10` 20 | 21 | *Stratum 1.2.2* 22 | 23 | ``` 24 | size(3200, 2000); 25 | background(255); 26 | for (int y = 0; y < height; y += 80) { 27 | for (int x = 0; x < width; x += 80) { 28 | if (random(1) > 0.5) { 29 | line(x, y, x+80, y+80); 30 | } else { 31 | line(x, y+80, x+80, y); 32 | } 33 | } 34 | } 35 | ``` 36 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /Notation.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | - A line on a square piece of paper. 2 | 3 | - A horizontal line on a square piece of paper. 4 | 5 | - A horizontal line on a square piece of paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page. 6 | 7 | - A horizontal line on a square piece of paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page that starts and stops at one quarter of the page width from the left and right edges. 8 | 9 | - A horizontal line on a square piece of thirty-centimeter-wide paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page that starts and stops at one quarter of the page width from the left and right edges. 10 | 11 | - A one-millimeter-thick horizontal line on a square piece of thirty-centimeter-wide paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page that starts and stops at one quarter of the page width from the left and right edges. 12 | 13 | - A black one-millimeter-thick horizontal line on a square piece of thirty-centimeter-wide paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page that starts and stops at one quarter of the page width from the left and right edges. 14 | 15 | - A black one-millimeter-thick horizontal line on a square piece of brown thirty-centimeter-wide paper placed halfway between the top and bottom of the page that starts and stops at one quarter of the page width from the left and right edges. 16 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/organizing.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | NOTES ON KINETIC SCULPTURE 2 | 3 | Appalled by the lack of information on the web and difficulty... 4 | Not comprehensive, focusing on some more interesting practicitioners and theorists. 5 | 6 | /////////////////// 7 | 8 | AUTOMATA 9 | 10 | Jacques Vaucanson, French 1709-1778 11 | Pierre Jaquet-Droz 12 | 13 | 14 | /////////////////// 15 | 16 | KINETIC SCULPTURE 17 | 18 | Marcel Duchamp 1887 - ?? 19 | Naum Gabo 20 | Alexander Calder 1898 21 | Laszlo Moholy-Nagy ?? - 1946 22 | 23 | Nicolas Schoffer 1912 - 24 | Alan Rath ?? - 25 | Takis 1925 - 26 | Jean Tinguely 27 | Wen-Ying Tsai 1928 - 28 | James Searight 1922 - 29 | Pol Bury 1922 30 | 31 | Dennis Oppenheim 32 | Charles Ray 33 | Rebecca Horn 34 | Tim Hawkinson 35 | 36 | 37 | /////////////////// 38 | 39 | ART THEORY AND CRITISISM 40 | 41 | Krauss 42 | Burnam 43 | 44 | 45 | /////////////////// 46 | 47 | CYBERNETICIANS & ROBOTICS 48 | 49 | Origins 50 | Norbert Weiner 51 | W. Grey Walter 52 | Ross Ashby 53 | Valentino Braitenberg 54 | Hans Morevec 55 | Rodney Brooks 56 | 57 | 58 | XX /////////////////// 59 | 60 | XX ARTIFICIAL LIFE 61 | 62 | XX Synthetic Characters Group 63 | XX Karl Sims 64 | XX Terzopoulos 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | /////////////////// 69 | Resources 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/wiener.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Scientific American article by Norbert Wiener 2 | Cybernetics 3 | 4 | control and communication - "attempts to find the common elements in the functioning of automatic machines and of the human nervous system." 5 | -- feedback mechanisms, example of picking up a pencil 6 | 7 | - this changes the way we think of the operation of our bodies 8 | - creates a circular process (nervous system -> muscles | sense organs -> nervous system -> muscles) 9 | 10 | 11 | /////////////////////// 12 | 13 | another way to look at systems view vs perceptual view is to think of a person picking up a pen, from Wiener's Cybernetics 14 | 15 | "Suppose that I pick up a pencil. To do this I have to move certain muscles. Only an expert anatomist knows what all these muscles are, and even an anatomist could hardly perform the act by a conscious exertion tf the will to contract each muscle concerned in succession. Actually what we will is not to move individual muscles but to pick up the pencil. Once we have determined on this, the motion of the arm and hand proceeds in such a way that we may say that the amount by which the pencil is not yet picked up is decreased at each stage. This part of the action is not in fulll consciousness." 16 | 17 | so the systems view is about the individual muscles being stimulated in the right amount and the right order and the perceptual view is about picking up the pencil 18 | 19 | 20 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/jacquet-droz.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Pierre Jacquet-Droz 2 | Swiss 1721-1790 3 | Young Writer, circa 1770 4 | 5 | ///////////////// 6 | [14] The Machine 7 | 8 | [14, p21] 9 | "When the mechanism is started, the boy dips his pen in the inkwell, shakes it twice, places his hand at the top of the page, and pauses. As the level is pressed again, he begins to write, slowly and carefully, distinguishing in his characters between light and heavy strokes." 10 | 11 | toured every court in Europe, the delight of the wealthy 12 | 13 | the most advanced writer ever built up to that time 14 | 15 | the goal was not just to build a mechanism of highest quality, but also to present a mysterious artificial being -- a mechanical man 16 | - the effect (not the method) that was important 17 | 18 | the only writer to distinguish between thick and thin strokes 19 | 20 | 21 | ////////////////// 22 | 23 | [08] Chapius 24 | 25 | 28 inches tall and carved in wood 26 | 27 | you could actually program by taking out a disk from back and changing values 28 | 29 | "To compose a text, the disc (7) is taken out and the wedges are adjusted to produce the desired letters. Frequent adjustments have to be made before everything is exactly right. The discs of the cams, which are 7/10mm thick, must be placed very exactly in relation to the corresponding levers, or else they will pass from one cam to the next and the automaton will only produce a scrawl." 30 | 31 | - analog tech 32 | 33 | to reduce friction and wear, part of the levers pressing into the cams were faced with ruby 34 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/haugeland.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Artificial Intelligence, The Very Ideas 2 | John Haugeland 3 | 4 | Cybernetics is 'systems' or 'control' theory 5 | originally developed by Norbert Wiener, 1948 6 | 7 | for a system S and desired output O, build S so that it measures its own output, detects any errors therein, and then automatically compensates for them to produce O. 8 | 9 | the fundamental principle of negative feedback (compensation). 10 | 11 | feedback is a deep concept, examples everywhere 12 | 13 | feedback examples: 14 | thermometer - if the temp fails, the heater turns on to bring it back up 15 | cruise control on a car 16 | 17 | "Let the output of a system be the variable or result that is of concern (e.g., the temperature); let the input be those external factors that affect the output ..." 18 | 19 | "Consider three balls: one resting on a flat, level surface; one resting at the bottom of a rounded valley; and one resting at the top of a rounded hill. All three are in equilibrium -- that is, perfectly balanced -- but they will behave differently if slightly perturbed. The first is in neutral equilibrium; if it rolled a little, that would introduce no new forces (no feedback). The second is a stabile equilibrium: it rolled a little, gravity would tend to pull it back down where it was (negative feedback). The third is in unstable equilibrium: if it rolled a little, gravity would accelerate its motion and roll it all the way off the hill (positive feedback). 20 | 21 | cybernetics failed as a method for AI, real organisms are far more complex in operation than cybernetics can approximate through it's numerical representation 22 | 23 | 24 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/agam.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Yaacov Agam 2 | born 1928 Israel 3 | 4 | ///// 5 | 6 | [23] Popper. Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 7 | 8 | Agam, like Soto, has made work that is transformable when viewer passes in front of it 9 | 10 | his art is based on the realm of the possible 11 | 12 | [23, p110] 13 | quote from Agam 14 | "Indeed, nothing is fixed in nature nor in the cosmos, and the painting that attempts to attain the truth through congealed/fixed representations falls far short of touching this truth of nature. Everything in nature/reality/creation can be transformed with endless variety, while preserving a particular and defined character" 15 | 16 | movement allows for the presentation of the unfolding of a structure in time 17 | 18 | 1952 his work shifted, to engage the spectator to participate actively in the movement, some of the work requires physical manipulation and other only moving in front of the work 19 | 20 | [23, p258] 21 | the viewer's presence produces motion 22 | 23 | 24 | ///// 25 | 26 | [10] The Movement 27 | 28 | [10, p14] 29 | quote from Agam 30 | 31 | "living expression of reality instead of fixing it forever, as did the art of all the great civilizations." 32 | 33 | "The artwork is an event in perpetual evolution. Reality must not be looked at as through a window that looks out on a landscape that never changes, even with the seasons, but as a permanent event in which one participates." 34 | 35 | 36 | ///// 37 | 38 | [24] Art of the Electronic Age 39 | 40 | [24, p26] 41 | 42 | in his contrapuntal and polyphonic works, the structure is only revealed if a viewer moves in front of them 43 | in his transformables, the elements may be rearranged freely by the spectator-participant 44 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/tsai.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Wen-Ying Tsai 2 | 3 | //////////// 4 | 5 | [28] Cybernetic Serendipity 6 | 7 | stainless steel planes on top of vibrating stainless steel rods. in constant motion, appearance is altered by high-frequency lighting on the sculpture. the frequency of the strobe flash is linked to external stimulus controlled by the proximity of the viewer or sound in the environment (ambient sound). the lighting changes the perception from gentle undulation to rapid vibration 8 | 9 | studies mechanical engineering and art 10 | 11 | ///// 12 | 13 | [24] Frank Popper's Art of the Electronic Age 14 | 15 | tries to integrate the natural with sythetic environment 16 | 17 | Upward Falling Fountain 18 | - using strobe lighting to make water appear to flow up (based heavily on the work of harold eggerton) 19 | 20 | Desert Spring(1991) 21 | - newer work based on his earlier work 22 | - focuses on homeostatic relationship between art and the environment 23 | - stability and disturbance 24 | - automatically compensates for changes in the environment 25 | - detects through infra-red sensors 26 | - through movement and sound spectators stimulate and destabilize the sculpture 27 | - when people leave, it returns to its tranquil state of mild undulation 28 | 29 | ///// 30 | 31 | [13] Hulten, The Machine . . . 32 | 33 | American, born China 1928 34 | Artist and Engineer 35 | 36 | Cybernetic Sculpture, 1968 37 | an EAT project from the Pontus Hulten Moma show 38 | collaboration with engineer Frank T. Turner 39 | multiple stainless steel units, each 9'4" high x 20" diameter at base; oscillator, stroboscopic lights 40 | - based on concept of standing wave produced by a vibrating rod 41 | - several grouped together 42 | - the visual effect is continually modulated by high-frequency stroboscopic lights 43 | - the lights react to sound 44 | - the "sense of contact" with the work is in the subtlety of reaction 45 | - "the response of the trembling rods seems a direct translation of his voice" 46 | - "The technical solution that produces this illusionistic feat is at once so discreet and so efficient that it strikes us as perfect." 47 | 48 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/gabo.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Naum Gabo 2 | 3 | Training in engineering, mathematics, physics, medicine 4 | 5 | ///// 6 | 7 | [15] Rosalind Krauss 8 | 9 | Krauss paraphrasing Carola Giedion-Welcker says that Gabo's work is about using "light to open up matter to an analysis of its structure". 10 | 11 | FUTURISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM 12 | 13 | Tatlin's constructivism used the properties of the material as the basis of form. Gabo's ideals were to imagine a conceptual form and then build it with the appropriate materials. 14 | 15 | ///// 16 | 17 | [14] Hulten, The Machine, As Seen . . . 18 | 19 | Kinetic Sculpture: Standing Wave, 1920 (same year as Rotary Glass Plate) 20 | - made in Moscow, 24.25 inches high 21 | - thin metal rod attached to the vibrator of a doorbell 22 | - a completely dematerialized volume, the space defined by the wave 23 | - these two projects were the first where artist used a motor for expressive means 24 | 25 | 26 | ///// 27 | 28 | [23] Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 29 | 30 | Gabo's Virtual Kinetic Volume 31 | - the result of deep reflection 32 | - an example of principle in their Realist Manifesto 33 | - "Through constructivist techniques we are today capable of bringing to light the hidden forces of nature and realizing psychic events." 34 | - did not make an attempt to follow this experiment 35 | - he thought the motor was an encumbrance and thought that "future development in the study of heat and radio, and the powers released in the process, would make possible kinetic solutions of a type hither to unanticipated" 36 | 37 | ///// 38 | 39 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 40 | 41 | [07, p230] 42 | Kinetic Construction, his only construction in real motion 43 | - it is utmost simplicity and this is part of its importance 44 | - virtual volume 45 | - immateriality of matter 46 | 47 | in Gabo's 1937 essay Circle 48 | "Mechanics have not yet reached that stage of absolute perfection where it can produce motion in a sculptural work without killing, through the mechanical parts, the pure sculptural content; because the motion is of importance and not the mechanism that produces it. Thus the solution of this problem becomes a task of future generations." 49 | 50 | 51 | ///// 52 | 53 | [09] Force Fields, reprint of The Realistic Manifesto 54 | 55 | [09, p228] 56 | by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner 57 | "We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts. We affirm in these arts a new element, the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time." 58 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/seawright.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | James Seawright 2 | 3 | born 1922 Jackson, Mississippi 4 | educated at University of Mississippi & Art Students League, NY 5 | 6 | ///// 7 | 8 | [11] Crosby, Kinetics 9 | 10 | Network I, 1968-69 11 | Metal, plastic, electronic parts 12 | Size () x () x 45 13 | Collection the Stable Gallery, New York 14 | 15 | answering questions from Douglas Davis 16 | 17 | "... I generally think of motors, lamps, circuits, etc, as they are used in my sculptures as having little interest in themselves; it is the way they are integrated into a functioning system that strikes me as the essential application of contemporary technology." 18 | 19 | "There is nothing about the materials that imposes a different kind of limitation than the limitations any other materials impose on a sculpture ... Working directly with the materials as I do, I find that here is a great deal of spontaneous arrangement and rearrangement possible with the possible components of a given piece." 20 | 21 | "I suspect that as more and more artists begin to concern themselves with the possibilities of technology, there will emerge a more general view that technology simply offers extraordinarily powerful tools for accomplishing the aims of artists, just as it has enabled people to fulfill many of their material needs." 22 | 23 | ///// 24 | 25 | [28] Cybernetic Serendipity 26 | 27 | "Scanner, a cybernetic sculpture, which Seawright made in New York in 1966. It is 70 inches high and 105 inches wide. It is constructed with metal, plastic and electronic parts." 28 | 29 | ///// 30 | 31 | [07] Beyond Modern Sculpture by Jack Burnam 32 | 33 | -compliments Seawright for the most technically accomplished cyborg art 34 | 35 | quote from the New York Times 36 | "The machines process information. Their cells and sensors collect information on light and sound, and they behave accordingly. My aim is not to "program" them but to produce a kind of patterned personality. Just as a person you know very well can surprise you, so can these machines. That's the crux of what I want to happen." 37 | 38 | Searcher, 1966 39 | Burnam - "Instead of Searcher's simply reproducing the same program or settling into a state of equilibrium, the condition of its previous states determines the variety of its future states, just as new stimuli would." 40 | 41 | often the experiments in a laboratory are an unexciting assembly of mechanical parts, and work in a studio is an unintentional parody of technology 42 | 43 | Seawright is able to fuse behavioral and visual features into the same system 44 | 45 | "I do think it is possible to consider the processes and principles of technology as a medium for art just as validly as a conventional artist might consider wood, stone, bronze, paint on canvas, etc., and all the old precepts about understanding the nature of the medium, etc., are just as true here." 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/takis.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Takis (Vassilakis) 2 | 3 | ///// 4 | 5 | [01] Evidence of the Unseen, Wayne Anderson 6 | 7 | Fellow at CAVS in 1968 8 | - CAVS begin in 1967, Gyorgy Kepes director 9 | 10 | Kepes on Takis 11 | "He is one of those rich, rare, lucky men who can wonder with the joyful confidence of a child, with the disciplined inquiry of a scientist, and with the questioning eye of an artist-poet." 12 | 13 | to make visible the effect or presence of unseen but natural performance. 14 | 15 | "Takis is a romantic man, intensely in love with nature. He seems to be courting the whole phenomenological world, as if it were undifferentiated by size, distance, or significance." 16 | 17 | "A man coming late into our century may be aggravated by the new materials or awed to think of using them; he may adopt a romantic attitude or a coldly pragmatic one. But Takis, born into this century, is awed not by the materials but by the thought of how these achievements may be extended." 18 | 19 | Takis feels that Duchamp set artists free from the work of art. Duchamp allowed natural forces to intervention between intention and art when he dropped the one meter long string to the earth 20 | (this is referring to Duchamp's "Three Standard Stoppages", 1913) 21 | 22 | - his work is not making images, but giving evidence of the unseen in nature 23 | - his work must be seen as phenomenological, not visual form 24 | - enriches our awareness of the world through perception 25 | 26 | - Takis has been called a scientist and that his works are simple scientific demonstrations, not art 27 | - but his demonstrations are poetic, not explanatory 28 | - they are spiritual and not pragmatic 29 | 30 | 31 | ///// 32 | 33 | [13] Hulten, The Machine, As Seen . . . 34 | 35 | Tele-Sculpture. 1960 36 | 37 | upright cylinder is an electromagnet, which switches off and on at regular intervals, it attracts the black spool and repels the white sphere. when off the black and white spheres attract each other 38 | 39 | magnetism is less controllable and intangible that mechanical aparatus 40 | 41 | 42 | ///// 43 | 44 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 45 | 46 | [07, p270] 47 | some of the Telemagnetic constructions are lethargic while others are aggressive based on the number of objects, the strength of the field 48 | 49 | "I follow the indications of the materials, I do not dominate them, I hardly ever create. You must understand that. When I use a found object, a piece of some machine, it is to get away from art and nearer invisible forces." 50 | 51 | 52 | ///// 53 | 54 | [23] Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 55 | 56 | since 1959 Telesculptures (magnetism) 57 | since 1955 Signals (vibratory movement) 58 | 59 | originally built delicate constructions of iron and steel which moved based on apparently random air currents 60 | 61 | making the forces which dominate our world perceptible on a human level 62 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/vaucanson.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Vaucanson 2 | 3 | 4 | ///// 5 | 6 | [10] The Movement 7 | 8 | Jean-Paul Sartre, p22 of 9 | "But the automaton's charm is precisely the fact that it waves a fan or plays the guitar like a man and that nevertheless the movement of its hand has the pitiless and blink rigor of purely mechanical transmissions." 10 | 11 | ///// 12 | 13 | [13] Hulten, The Machine 14 | 15 | Jacques Vaucanson, French 1709-1782 16 | Duck 1733-34 (photograph of lost original or imitation in a ruined state) 17 | 18 | Eighteenth Century saw an increased interest in Automata and also debates regarding the mechanical nature of man. 19 | 20 | influenced by Descartes and other contemporary philosophers 21 | 22 | wanted to construct moving anatomical figure for surgeons to demonstrate bodily operations 23 | 24 | lacking funds, he created public curiosities 25 | 26 | in 1738 he presented three automata before the Academie Royal des Sciences including the duck. 27 | 28 | described as "an artificial Duck made of gilded copper which drinks, eats, quacks, splashes about on the water, and digests his food like a living Duck." 29 | 30 | described by Voltaire as a rival Promethius 31 | 32 | 33 | ///// 34 | 35 | [07] Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 36 | 37 | Vaucanson was the forerunner to the great automata builders of the eighteenth century. He brought smoothness of movement and coordination to a new level through innovating cams systems, miniature drive trains, and small flexible spring mechanisms 38 | 39 | in the seventeenth-century Descartes developed a mechanistic view of physiology 40 | 41 | mechanical similies to animal functions: sleeping, breathing, digestion, heartbeat, etc. 42 | 43 | he thought humans had souls and animals did not and therefore a perfectly constructed machine could duplicate any of the lower animals 44 | 45 | French Academy of Sciences 46 | 1738 also showed a flute player capable of moving its fingers and playing the instrument. Inspired by a statue in garden of the Tuileries 47 | 48 | in 1738 also showed the Tabor player (Drummer) 49 | 50 | "he spent much time on the position of the lips and on questions of the air pressure needed to secure low and hight notes while passing from one octave to another with a simple movement of the lips, and by changes in the speed at which the breath entered the mouthpiece." 51 | 52 | 53 | ///// 54 | 55 | [08] Chapius, Automata 56 | 57 | one is wing is claimed to have over 400 articulated pieces, several thousand over all 58 | 59 | "On Sunday night there was a crowd, a queue formed and there were no vacant seats. After each of the duck's performances there was an interval of a quarter of an hour to replace the food. ... Greatest amazement was caused when it drank three glasses of wine, filling everyone with wonder." 60 | 61 | The Duck was an attempt to produce more than the outward features of an organism 62 | 63 | this was all produced at a time when all mechanisms were precious, watches were not made inexpensive until nineteenth century 64 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/arkin.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Ronald C. Arkin, Behavior Based Robotics 2 | 3 | CHAPTER 1, WHENCE BEHAVIOR? 4 | 5 | [02, p8] 6 | W. Grey Walter and the Machina Speculatrix 7 | 1. parsimony, simple is better 8 | 2. exploration/speculation, the system never remains still except when recharging 9 | 3. attraction (positive tropism), the system is movtivated to move toward something 10 | 4. aversion (negative tropism), the system moves away from certain negative stimuli 11 | 5. discernment, ability to distinguish between productive and unproductive behavior 12 | 13 | 14 | [02, p10] 15 | Valentino Braitenberg followed this tradition in 1984 with Vehicles 16 | 17 | 1.3.2 Reactive Systems 18 | "Simply put, reactive control is a technique for tightly coupling perception and action, typically in the context of motor behaviors, to produce timely robotic response in dynamic and unstructured worlds. 19 | - an individual behavior: stimulus/response pair 20 | - attention: prioritize dependent on the environment 21 | - intention: internal goals and objectives 22 | - overt/emergent behavior: interaction of individual behaviors 23 | - reflexive behavior: tight sensor-effect arcs also from Brooks (1991b) 24 | - situatedness: doesn't act upon representations, but reality itself 25 | - embodiment: spatial reality 26 | - emergence: intelligence is a product of agent and environment together 27 | 28 | 29 | CHAPTER FOUR: BEHAVIOR BASED ARCHITECTURES 30 | 31 | [02, p125] 32 | definition for robot architecture 33 | "Robotic architecture is the discipline devoted to the design of highly specific and individual robots from a collection of common software building blocks." 34 | "An architecture describes a set of architectural components and how they interact." 35 | "Architectures are constructed from components, with each specific architecture having its own peculiar set of building blocks. The ways in which these building blocks can be connected facilitate certain types of robotic design in given circumstances. Organizing principles underlie a particular architecture's commitment to its component structure, granularity, and connectivity." 36 | 37 | all architectures provide for sequential tasks, conditional branching, provide for iterative constructs and are therefore computability equivalent 38 | 39 | 40 | Rodney Brooks 41 | 42 | (1991b) 43 | Behavior based methodology (quoted form Arkin) 44 | "Situatedness: the robot is an entity entirely situated and surrounded by the real world. It does not operate upon abstract representations of reality, but rather reality itself. 45 | Embodiment: A robot has a physical presence (a body). this spatial reality has consequences in its dymanimc interactions with the world that cannot be simulated faithfully. 46 | Emergence: Intelligence arises from the interacitons of the robotic agent with its environment. It is not a property of either the agent or the environment in isolation but is rather a result of the interplay between them." 47 | 48 | situatedness is also a two-way coupling between the organism and the environment 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/tinguely.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Jean Tinguely 2 | 3 | 4 | ///// 5 | 6 | [31] Jewish Museum 7 | 8 | impulsive freedom, expressive anarchy 9 | 10 | [31, p9] 11 | "Tinguely's machines are really "anti-machine," as has so often stated in print, aligned on the side of animal energy and vitalism. The hectic and uncertain life of his mechanical equipment, always on the verge of breakdown or disintegration, releases finally pure like an arabesque of movement, or gesture, and each of his machines carries its own distinctive face and personality." 12 | 13 | machine as an "agent of disorder" 14 | 15 | ///// 16 | 17 | [13] Hulten, The Machine . . . 18 | 19 | tinguely practices meta-mechanics -> like the analogy of physics and meta-physics 20 | 21 | - they are feverish, mechanical disorder 22 | - ignore the conventions of previous machines, the opposite of order, precision, reliability, regularity 23 | - improvisation, inefficiency, shabbiness = freedom 24 | 25 | Meta-matic series 26 | - auto-creative are a comment about art making as a statement of individuality, together man and machine project an irrational product. 27 | - auto-destructive machines are strong comment on society 28 | 29 | [13, p167] 30 | quote from Tinguely 31 | "For me, the machine is above all an instrument that permits me to be poetic. If you respect the machine, if you enter into a game with the machine, then perhaps you can make a truly joyous machine -- by joyous, I mean free. That's a marvelous thing, don't you think?" 32 | 33 | Homage to New York 34 | most important of self-destroying machine 35 | article Garden Party written after by Billy Kulver 36 | - was built at the Museum in a period of three weeks 37 | - "When on March 17, 1960, his machine was put into action, the spectacle was one of beautiful humor, poetry, and confusion. Jean's machine performed for half an hour and exists no more." 38 | - bought old motors on canal street, dumps in new jersey, second-hand stores in new york 39 | - made from bicycle and baby carriage wheels, pulleys, a piano, fire extinguishers, two meta-matics, a bassinet, pipes, flags, rusty-oil cans, stinking liquids 40 | - no regard for engineering principles, total anarchy and freedom 41 | - partially worked as conceived 42 | - performance began late, artist still working on it 43 | - p170 "The piano was to begin playing slowly as the flame on the keyboard was lighted. But the step-up transformer had broken in transport, sothemotor had to be started directly at full speed. The result was that the driving sling jumped the wheel on the piano as the motor started ... A fuse had blown ... The piano began working again, but only three notes were playing -- three sad notes. Some slings had been lost." 44 | - p171 "Just as in every moment we see and experience a new and changing world, Jean's machine created and destroyed itself as a representation of a moment in our lives" 45 | 46 | ///// 47 | 48 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 49 | 50 | "Tinguely has succeeded psychologically because he has exploited the underlying human hostility to mechanization" 51 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/ashby.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Ashby, Ross W. Design for a Brain. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. London. 1960 2 | 3 | [03, p2] 4 | on two kinds of behavior 5 | 6 | "The first is type is reflex behaviour. It is inborn, it is genetically determined in detail, it is a product, in the vertibrates, cheifly of centres in the spinal cord and in the base of the brain, and it is not appreciably modified by individual experience. The second type is learned behaviour. It is not inborn, it is not genetically determined in detail (more fully discussed in S. 1/9), it is a product chiefly of the cerebral cortex, and it is modified markedly by the organism's individual experiences." 7 | 8 | [03, p13] 9 | "We start by assuming that we have before us some dynamic system. i.e. something that may change with time. We wish to study it. It will be referred to as the 'machine', but the word must be understood in the widest possible sense, for no restriction is implied at the moment other than that it should be objective." 10 | 11 | [03, p14] 12 | "A variable is a measurable quantity which at every instant has a definite numerical value." 13 | 14 | [03, p15] 15 | "It will be appreciated that every real 'machine' embodies no less than as infinite number of variables, all but a few of which must of necessity be ignored." 16 | 17 | [03, p16] 18 | "a system is then defined as any set of variables that he selects form those available on the real 'machine'." 19 | this is an example of an abstraction 20 | "The state of a system at a given instant is the set of numerical values which its variables have at that instant." 21 | 22 | [03, p30] 23 | "There can be little doubt that any single quantity observable in the living organism can be treated at least in principle as a variable All bodily movements can be specified by co-ordinates. All joint movements can be specified by angles. Muscle tensions can be specified by their pull in dynes. Muscle movements can be specified by co-ordinates based on the bony structure or on some fixed external point, and can therefore be recorded numerically. A gland can be specified in its activity by its rate of secretion. Pulse-rate, blood-pressure, temperature, rate of blood-flow, tension of smooth muscle, and a host of other variables can be similarly recorded." 24 | 25 | [03, p36] 26 | example of an organism and its environment form a single state-determined system 27 | "...consider a butterfly and a bird in the air, the bird chasing the butterfly, and the butterfly evading the bird. Both use the air around them. Every movement of the bird stimulates the butterfly's eyes and this stimulation, acting through the butterfly's nervous system, will cause changes in the butterfly's wing movement. These movements act on the enveloping air and cause changes to the butterfly's position. So the processes go on. The bird has as environment the air and the butterfly, while the butterfly has the air and the bird. The whole may reasonably be assumed to be state-determined." 28 | 29 | // 30 | "The organism affects the environment, and the environment affects the organism: such a system is said to have 'feedback'...When the bird and butterfly manoeuvre in the air, each manoeuvre of one causes reactive changes to occur in the other." 31 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/moravec.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Hans Moravec, The Universal Robot in Arts Electronica, Facing the Future 2 | 3 | (Moravec is head of CMU mobile robot lab) 4 | 5 | [18, p116] 6 | "Today's best computer-controlled robots are like the simpler invertebrates. A thousand-fold increase in computer power in the next decade should make possible machines with reptile-like sensory and motor competence. Properly configured, such robots could do in the physical world what personal computers do now in the world of data -- act on our behalf as literal-minded slaves." 7 | 8 | "Instincts which predispose the nature and quantity of work we enjoy probably evolved during the 100,000 years our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers. Less than 10,000 years ago the agricultural revolution made life more stabile, and richer in goods and information. But, paradoxically, it requires more human labor to support an agricultural society than a primitive one, and the work is of a different, unnatural kind, out of step with the old instincts. The effort to avoid this work has resulted in domestication of animals, slavery, and the industrial revolution." 9 | 10 | "Our minds were evolved to store the skills and memories of a stone-age life, not the enormous complexity that has developed in the last 10,000 years. We've kept up, after a fashion, through schooling, written records stored outside the body, and recently machines that can do some of our thinking entirely without us." 11 | 12 | [18, p117] 13 | on ai vs robotics 14 | "While the pure reasoning programs did their jobs about as well and about as fast as college freshman, the best robot control programs took hours to find and pick up a few blocks on a table. Often these robots failed completely, giving a performance much worse than a six-month-old child. 15 | we can make robots to play chess at a master level but we can't even make one that can find an appropriate piece and move it 16 | "In hindsight it seems that, in an absolute sense, reasoning is much easier than perceiving adn acting, a position not hard to rationalize in evolutionary terms. The survival of human beings (and their ancestors) has depended for hundreds of millions of years on seeing and moving in the physical world, and in that competition large parts of their brains have become efficiently organized for the task. But we didn't appreciate this monumental skill because it is shared by every human being and most animals, it is commonplace. On the other hand, rational thinking, as in chess, is a newly acquired skill, perhaps less than 100,000 years old. The parts of the brain devoted to it are not well organized, and, in an absolute sense, we're not very good at it. But until recently we had no competition to show us up." 17 | 18 | the cybernetic approach is very slow because it attempts to imitate the nervous system 19 | 20 | ai has successfully imitated some aspects of rational thought 21 | 22 | 23 | *** a new approach has emerged that is simulating biological evolution 24 | 25 | [18, p118] 26 | "Robotics research is imitating the evolution of animal minds, adding capabilities to machines a few at a time, so that the resulting sequence of machine behaviors resembles the capabilities of animals with increasingly complex nervous systems." 27 | an effor to build intelligence from the bottom up 28 | 29 | [18, p188] 30 | "The best robots today are controlled by computers just powerful enough to simulate the nervous system of an insect, cost as much as houses, and so find only a few profitable niches in society (among them, spray painting and spot welding cars and assembling electronics). 31 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/bury.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Pol Bury, b1922, Belgian 2 | 3 | ///// 4 | 5 | Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 6 | 7 | - initially stimulated by Calder 8 | 9 | [23, p128] 10 | first worked on Mobile Planes, masonite sculpture that relied on the viewer for movement 11 | - modifying the composition through movement and inviting the spectator to participate with the work 12 | - exhibited Mobile Planes at Gallery Apollo, Brussels in 1953 13 | 14 | next worked on Multi-planes 1957-59, similar in form but automated by small motors 15 | - turned very slowly and transformed the composition almost without the spectators knowing 16 | - a range of kinetic movement that had yet to be explored 17 | 18 | post 1959, complicated structures in wood, metal, nylon 19 | - work suggests the teeming movement of micro-organisms, sea urchins, or anemones 20 | - the motor should be hidden 21 | - there should be as much chance as possible 22 | - the movement should be "anonymous, silent, and supernatural" 23 | 24 | "Just as the painter benefits from knowing some of the elementary theories of the laws of colour, I have felt myself obliged to take certain mechanical principles into account. Since the micro-motors which I use have a limited power, I have been able to exploit the principle of the inclined plane, for instance, to animated elements whose weight exceeded the capacities of the motor. This is a long way from painting and sculpture." 25 | 26 | 27 | ///// 28 | 29 | The Movement 30 | 31 | in 1953 abandoned painting and began first mobile sculptures 32 | in 1957 began incorporating electric motors, and therefore the characteristic slowness in his work (combining the perceptible and the imperceptible) 33 | 34 | [10, p20] 35 | from Time Dialated 36 | - the slow speed removes weight, gravity, path 37 | - becomes more of a journey without beginning or end, perpetual 38 | - "Between the immobile and mobility, a certain quality of slowness reveals to us a field of "actions" in which the eye is no longer able to trace an object's journeys...Journeys avoid "programmization" in the degree that they are endowed with a quality of slowness; they finally achieve a real or fictional liberty, a liberty acting on its own account and for its own pleasure...Speed limits space, slowness multiplies it." 39 | 40 | Plan Mobile 4, 1954 41 | - three planes, each manipulable, each its own degree of freedom 42 | "By distributing these forms in three successive planes, I managed to give each of them an axis. That of the first plane was fixed on to the second plane, that of the second fixed on to the third, while the third was fixed to the wall. It was possible to turn the first plane while the other two remained motionless. This permitted in theory an infinite number of pictorial combinations." 43 | 44 | ///// 45 | 46 | Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 47 | 48 | is regard to Bury's statement in Time Dialated 49 | - in contrast to most kinetic movement which is macroscopic or immaterial, his is microscopic 50 | 51 | with the ball sculptures, cords lead to random actuating device 52 | 53 | his work is most powerful when presented as a group, experiencing through the periphery, it is possible to feel the creaks 54 | 55 | [07, p272] 56 | "Through silence, one feels the creaking of cords, spools, and linked shapes from all directions. Out of the corners of the eyes hundreds of multisensual movements take place imperceptibly. As in the hull of a sailing ship, wood strains against wood as the elements press against the live shell of doweled beams and planks. Without the interference of other human visitors, a room of Bury sculptures rocks with subliminal activity." 57 | 58 | 59 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/duchamp.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Marcel Duchamp 2 | b1887 France 3 | 4 | Bicycle Wheel, 1913 5 | - the first modern work to contain actual movement to express meaning (Hulten) 6 | Rotary Glass Plate (Precision Optics), w/Man Ray, 1920 7 | Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics), 192 8 | Rotoreliefs (1935) 9 | 10 | this work is more metaphysical and aesthetic than art in motion 11 | 12 | ///// 13 | 14 | [05] Guy Brett, Kinetic Art 15 | 16 | Duchamp, Gabo, Moholy-Nagy machines are examples of the transformative process of movement 17 | - Duchamps's machine revolves so that multiple planes create the appearance (illusion) of a single surface 18 | - Gabo's appears to have volume (virtual volume) 19 | - Moholy-Nagy's transforms from an object to an environmental experience 20 | 21 | ///// 22 | 23 | [14] Hulten, The Machine 24 | 25 | Rotary Glass Plate (Precision Optics). 1920 26 | 27 | [14, p103] 28 | quote from Man Ray 29 | "a strange machine consisting of narrowpanels ofglass on which were traced parts of a spiral, mountedona ballbearing axis connected toamotor.Theidea was that when these panels were set in motion, revolving, they completed the spiral when looked at from the front." 30 | 31 | the addition of a fourth dimension reduces space to a flat, intangible surface 32 | 33 | 34 | Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics). 1925 35 | 36 | commissioned by Jacques Doucet 37 | 38 | motor revolves a white demisphere painted with black eccentric circles. rotation makes it appear to recede in space rather than protrude. 39 | 40 | enlisted the assistance of a technition, disk is covered in black velvet 41 | 42 | wanted his work to be considered Optics and not included in art exhibitions 43 | 44 | 45 | ///// 46 | 47 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 48 | 49 | Rotating Glass Plates - five glass plates attached to a rod and turned by a small fan belt attached to an electric motor 50 | 51 | Bicycle - at the time it was one of the most elegant and modern objects. ball-bearing mounted axel and tension-wire spokes 52 | - a light turn would set it in motion for minutes 53 | - wheel into optical device 54 | 55 | he considered mechanical movement to be "unartistic", classified his work as not mechanical - thought the future of art would be created through the manipulation of light, through a technology more sophisticated than mechanics. 56 | 57 | dematerialization 58 | 59 | 60 | ///// 61 | 62 | The Movement 63 | 64 | Duchamp distanced himself from the art world 65 | 66 | 1935 created 12 rotoreliefs, placed them on the turntable of a phonograph, producing the illusion of motion in perspective, appear three-dimensional when set in motion 67 | 68 | he made an experiment for showing his art directly to the people 69 | 70 | he rented a tiny stand at Concours Lepine, near the Porte de Versailles 71 | and people passed by without paying attention. all the disks were turning at once, placed horizontally and vertically 72 | 73 | ///// 74 | 75 | [23] Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic art 76 | 77 | had been studying motion and machines 78 | The Bride, 1912 79 | The Coffee Grinder, 1911 (image of the mechanism, not exterior) 80 | Nude Descending Staircase, 1912 81 | "applying machinism to being" 82 | 83 | [23, p50] 84 | quote from Duchamp 85 | "This picture is not a painting, but an organization of kinetic elements - an expression of time and space through the abstract presentation of movement ... But we must bear in mind that, when we consider the movementofformin space over a certain time, we are entering the realm of geometry and mathematics, as when we construct a machine." 86 | 87 | there is direct link between bicycle wheel to this other rotary work 88 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/braitenberg.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Valentino Braitenberg 2 | Vehicles, Experiments in Synthetic Psychology 3 | 4 | a cybernetician, neuroanatomist, musician 5 | 6 | [04, p20] 7 | "A psychological consequence of this is the following: when we analyze a mechanism, we tend to overestimate its complexity. In the uphill process of analysis, a given degree of complexity offers more resistance to the workings of our mind than it would if we encountered it downhill, in the process of invention. We have already seen this happen when the observer of Vehicle 4b conjectured that the vehicle does some thinking before it reaches a decision, suggesting complicated internal processes where in reality there was nothing but a threshold device waiting for sufficient activation. The patterns of behavior described in the vehicles of type 4a undoubtedly suggest much more complicated machinery that that which was actually used in designing them." 8 | 9 | 10 | Similarities in vehicles 1-3, the more the sensor excited the faster the motor or vice versa, they are monotonic 11 | 12 | Vehicle 1, the simplest vehicle 13 | - the speed of the motor is controlled by a sensor. motion is always forward. 14 | - comes to rest when the force of friction becomes greater than the force exerted by the motor 15 | - sensor can be any kind. light, sound, temperature 16 | - elaborate on the temperature example 17 | - if small and in a turbulent environment such as a body of water it would be moved around by its environment, but always moving forward 18 | "Imaging, now, what you would think if you saw such a vehicle swimming around in a pond. It is restless, you would say, and does not like warm water. But it is quite stupid, since it is not able to turn back to the nice cold spot it overshot in its restlessness. Anyway, you would say, it is ALIVE, since you have never seen a particle of dead matter move around quite like that." 19 | 20 | 21 | Vehicle 2, fear and aggression 22 | - descendent of vehicle 1, the more the sensor is excited the faster the motor goes 23 | - two sets of motors and sensors -> three possible vehicles (a, b, c) 24 | - if exactly facing the source will fun into it, in a kinematic world this is very possible but in a kinetic world highly unlikely, always small forces acting on the vehicle 25 | - is the systems world 26 | - in the perception world, vehicle 2A is a coward and vehicle 2B is aggressive 27 | 28 | 29 | Vehicle 3, love 30 | - "crude" vehicles, only excited, nothing calming -> "violence" "cowardice" 31 | - inverse relation, slows down when close and speeds up when distant 32 | - will spend most of its time in the proximity of the stimulus 33 | - crossed connection is like(explorer), other is love 34 | - complex vehicle 3C, mutilsensory (light, temperature, oxygen concentration, amount of organic matter 35 | 36 | [04, p12] 37 | "This is now a vehicle with really interesting behavior. It dislikes high temperatures, turns away from hot places, and at the same time seems to dislike light bulbs with even greater passion, since it turns toward them and destroys them. On the other hand it definitely seems to prefer a well-oxygenated environment and one containing many organic molecules, since it spends much of its time in such places. but it is in the habit of moving elsewhere when the supply of either organic matter of (especially) oxygen is low. You cannon help admitting the Vehicle 3c has a system of VALUES, and, come to think of it, KNOWLEDGE, since some of the habits it has, like destroying light bulbs, may look quite knowledgeable, as if the vehicle knows that light bulbs tend to heat up the environment and consequently make it uncomfortable to live in. ..." 38 | 39 | 40 | Vehicle 4, Values and Special Tastes 41 | - INSTINCTS 42 | - thresholds give the appearance of PONDERING their DECISIONS 43 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/force_fields.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Borja-Villel, Manuel J. et al. Force Fields: Phases of the Kinetic. Museu d'Art Contemporani. Barcelona. 2000 2 | Catalog of an exhibition held in Barcelona at the MACBA, Apr. 19-June 18, 2000, and at Hayward Gallery, London July 13-Sep. 17, 2000. A new reading of art 1920-1970, a re-assessment of kinetic art 3 | 4 | [09, p10] 5 | "There are only movement and repose relative to one another: the movement of the elements of a work relative to its static base or frame or environment, the movement of the spectator relative to the work, the movement of a drawing hand relative to the resulting marks." 6 | 7 | maybe movement doesn't exist 8 | Duchamp joked, "What does he call movement, your fellow? If he defines it in opposition to rest, that doesn't work, because nothing is at rest in the universe. So? His movement is nothing but a myth?" 9 | 10 | [09, p14] 11 | on Gabo's standing wave 12 | "Simple as it may look today, to produce this 'standing wave' in the precarious conditions of Russia in 1920, to find or improvise the components in a country immersed in civil war and scarcity, took tremendous determinations and ingenuity, testifying to the intensity of Gabo's visionary enthusiasm." 13 | "Gabo never believed there was sufficient technical basis for an artistic language using actual motion." 14 | 15 | [09, p15] 16 | Calder's life work was dedicated to the interaction of an object with its surroundings. 17 | - notion of sculptural mass beyond gravity (motors) 18 | - open-up to outside influence (air, or human push) 19 | 20 | [09, p17] 21 | "...Calder's development of abstraction, which passes beyond a system of representation to a system of forces acting in space and time." 22 | 23 | 24 | [09, p267] 25 | Umberto Eco 26 | "...the two streams of artists really pursued the same aim to enlarge the patterns of perception and enjoyment." 27 | "...the liberation of man from acquired formal habits. And consequently the breakdown of perceptual schema. If perceptual habits encouraged one to appreciate a form as something fixed, then it was necessary to invent forms which never allowed one's attention to rest, forms always appearing different from themselves" 28 | 29 | [09, p294] 30 | reprint of statement from Hans Haacke 31 | "...make something which experiences, reacts to its environment, changes, is non-stable... 32 | ...make something which looks indeterminate, which always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely... 33 | ...make something which cannot perform without the assistance of the environment... 34 | ...make something which reacts to light and temperature changes, is subject to air currents and depends, in its functioning, on the forces of gravity... 35 | ...make something which the 'spectator' handles, with which he plays and this animates... 36 | ...make something which lives in time and makes the 'spectator' experience time... 37 | ...articulate something natural..." 38 | 39 | 40 | [09, p228] 41 | Realistic Manifesto by Gabo & Pevsner 42 | (extremely different from that presented in Vision in Motion) 43 | 44 | [09, p229] 45 | Dynamic-Constructive Energy-System 46 | "Carried further, the dynamic single-construction leads to the DYNAMIC-CONSTRUCTIVE ENERGY-SYSTEM, with the beholder, hitherto receptive in this contemplation of art-works, undergoing a greater heightening of his powers than ever before and Actually becoming an active factor in the play of forces." 47 | 48 | 49 | [09, p296] 50 | Hans Haacke in interview with Jack Burnam 51 | "Machines have a different temporal effect on human beings, that is, create a different effect on the nervous system, than nature's timing. Sunrise and sunset, the tides, running water, the movement of clouds, and the glittering reflections of water are only a few examples of natural patterns of time. Man is in tune with this timing..." 52 | (more) 53 | 54 | [09, p297] 55 | Haacke on technical education for sculptors 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/ray.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | [26] Charles Ray, from book from the Charles Ray from exhibition at MOCA, LA 2 | 3 | works spans photography, sculpture, performance, film 4 | figurative and abstract 5 | 6 | [26, p53] 7 | quote from Richard Koshalek, director of Museum 8 | "...results not only in a consistently fearless expression of his own inner convictions, but in powerful resonance with a much larger world." 9 | 10 | illusion, relation of people to things, performance, unstable sculpture encounter 11 | 12 | note from Beside One's Self, Paul Schimmel 13 | [26, p79] 14 | Tabletop (1989) 15 | "Tabletop(1989) consists of six objects arranged on a table. At first glance the objects seem stationary. But, in fact, they rotate so slowly that without patience -- the very same patience that one needs to see Minimalist paintings -- the viewer would not know that they are rotating at all." ... "Tabletop permitted him to explore the boundaries of peripheral vision and to create motions that readjusted the line where recognition begins." 16 | -platic tumbler, wooden table, aluminum shaker, terra cotta pot, plastic bowl 17 | 18 | 19 | [26, p80] 20 | "In Ink Box Ray produced an illusion of solidity that disguised the face that the work was dangerously unstable: a black box with an open top filled to the brim with two hundred gallons of printer's ink, which exactly matched the texture, color, and reflectivity of the black painted sides. Not unlike his earlier performative sculptures, this work has a life of its own -- a fulfillment of Ray's desire to make a sculpture that did not require his direct participation and that would still "come out of the notion of events. I'm really interested in the relationship of people to things." 21 | 22 | "Ink Box even spawned a sequel of sorts, Ink Line (1987). Focusing on the same kinesthetic desire to touch, Ray created this stream of black ink that ran like a string from the ceiling of his studio to the floor." 23 | 24 | "After Ink Box and Ink Line, Ray created an even more dangerously unstable, sculptural encounter for the public. He constructed a rapidly rotating circle flush with and the same color as the surrounding floor. Spinning at hundreds of revolutions per minute, this rotating circle was visually indistinguishable from its surroundings. Ray ultimately abandoned this work in favor of Rotating Circle, a circle with the dimensions of Ray's head installed flush in a wall at head level. This circle rotates so rapidly that it appears stationary, so its most pronounced effect on the viewer is auditory: the hum of the motor tips off the unsuspecting passer-by that something is not as it should be. With concise means, Ray created a real event that functioned as an abstraction and an abstraction that functioned in the real world." 25 | 26 | [26, p98] 27 | essay by Lisa Phillips 28 | "Ink Line (1987) could be a simple line or thread drawn from floor to ceiling -- but it is ink in perpetual motions, circulating in a thin stream between the two horizontal planes. Rotating Circle (1988) also appears to be a white on white circle drawn on the wall. In fact, it is a disc spinning so fast that its movement cannon be detected by the naked eye. Both of these works contain the potential of disruption and provoke anxiety as soon as you realize that they are: material in action. Again, things do not appear as they seem." 29 | "Sculpture is not static or idealized for Ray, but a temporal medium. All of this work comes out of what he calls "the wildness of the event." Even when he works with imagery, it's about the relationship of people to things, bodies to objects. Figure and experience are key. Ray has said that for him, "sculpture is a verb." (in discussion with author) His work has strong affinities with process art -- like that of Richard Serra who in 1967 compiled a list of verbs ("to roll, to crease, to fold...") that he went on to use as the basis of actual sculpture." 30 | "As much as Ray admires Minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd and Robert Morris, he also deflates them and satirizes them through his interventions and peculiar self-projections." 31 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/moholy_nagy.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Laszlo Moholy-Nagy 2 | 3 | 4 | ///// 5 | 6 | [07] Beyond Modern Sculpture 7 | 8 | [07, p290] 9 | Light-Space Modulator 10 | - made between 1922-1930 with aid of an expert mechanic 11 | - five feet high, aluminum and chrome-plated surfaces driven an electric motor and chain belts 12 | - made a film from it "Light Display: Black and White and Grey" 13 | - important as a prototype for later light sculpture, meant not just for projection, but also to be seen as an object in itself 14 | - cityscape at night is a kinetic light sculpture 15 | - emphasis on form through light 16 | - designed and built with the aid of an expert mechanic 17 | 18 | [07, p236] 19 | many of his concepts in kinetics relate to the concept of virtual volumes-- "the outline or trajectory presented by an object in motion" 20 | 21 | he saw sculpture as volume relationships, mass transformed into volume (like Gabo) 22 | 23 | he saw the artistic deficiencies of mechanical motion, but still thought it necessary to pursue 24 | 25 | ///// 26 | 27 | [15] Rosalind Krauss 28 | 29 | Moholy Nagy's Light Prop (or) Light-Space Modulator 30 | - originally intended as an on-stage projector 31 | 32 | [15, p208] 33 | "Like a human figure, the Light Prop has an internal structure that affects its outward appearance, and, more crucially, an internal source of energy that allows it to move. And, like a human agent, the work is meant to affect its space through the gestures which it makes over a period of time. The fact that these gestures -- the patterns of projected light and the shifting patterns that relate throughout its internal structure -- change in time, and have a complex program, gives the object an even more human, because seemingly volitional, quality. Thus, no matter how abstract its forms and its function, the Light Prop is a kind of robot; the place it was meant to take on stage is that of a mechanical actor." 34 | the light prop is therefore, the descendent of automatons. 35 | 36 | [15, p209] 37 | Behind it stands a far-reaching mimetic impulse, a passion to imitate not simly the look of the living creature but to reproduce as well its animations, its discourse with the passage of time." 38 | 39 | 40 | ///// 41 | 42 | [09] Force Fields 43 | 44 | [09, p229] 45 | Laszlo Moholy Nagy and Alfred Kemeny, Dynamic-Constructive Energy-System 46 | "We must replace the static principle of classical art with the dynamic principle of universal life. In practice: instead of static material-construction (relationships of material and form), we have to organize dynamic construction (vital constructivity, energy relationships), in which the material functions solely as a conveyor of energy. 47 | Carried further, the dynamic single-construction leads to the DYNAMIC-CONSTRUCTIVE ENERGY-SYSTEM, with the beholder, hitherto receptive in his contemplation of art-works, undergoing a greater heightening of his powers than ever before and actually becoming an active factor in the play of forces." 48 | 49 | 50 | ///// 51 | 52 | [05] Guy Brett, Kinetic Art 53 | 54 | in New Vision 55 | MN talks about "extraordinary adaptability", like a living body where adjusts to continually changing situations 56 | - more complex and dynamic than in static art 57 | - talks about water "in rest, in motion, in gaseous form, in liquid and solid form ... placid or rushing brook, as a raging sea, as pattering rainfall, as a spraying fountain, as a drifting cloud of steam... Its changes arise from an extraordinary adaptability to the forces acting upon it." 58 | 59 | saw that once art dropped its representational role, and space became real, the separateness between the work and the spectator would disolve. 60 | 61 | the dimension of time makes the work relative, it no longer has an isolated permanent existence 62 | 63 | 64 | ///// 65 | 66 | [14] Hulten, The Machine, As Seen . . . 67 | 68 | staff of Bauhaus 1923-1928 69 | 70 | p138 Light-Space Modulator 71 | - a complicated machine meant to function perfectly 72 | - had a chrome finish, 73 | - not an end in itself, but like a true machine, it was productive through it's projection of light 74 | - light reflected through the modulator and onto the walls 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/haacke.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Hans Haacke, German b.1936 2 | 3 | ///// 4 | 5 | [09] interview of Haacke by Burnham published in Force Fields 6 | 7 | HH on the categories currently address in Kinetics 8 | - there is no similarity between Gabo and Duchamp, Rickey and Tinguely 9 | - extremely slow change, speed, rhythm, steady flow, change in time, precise machine-controlled motion, and organic movement feeding on natural forces 10 | 11 | random behavior currently (then) alot of attention, viewer an active participant often acting as the generator (in the work of Agam, Soto, etc.) 12 | 13 | [09, p296] 14 | HH on machine vs. organic 15 | "Machines have a different temporal effect on human beings, that is, create a different effect on the nervous system, than nature's timing. Sunrise and sunset, the tides, running water, the patterns of time. Man is in tune with this timing: his breathing rhythm, his heartbeat, in short, the functioning of his whole body, and I would guess also the flow of his thoughts, are of a comparable nature. In contrast to this, artificial timing, as experienced daily in all highly industrialized societies, creates nervous tensions and probably contributes a great deal to the illnesses of just these social organizations." 16 | 17 | [09, p297] 18 | HH on technology and the artist 19 | "Granted, technical training in the plastic arts is inadequate today, but when has it ever been able to meet the demands of the avant-garde? Many of today's sculptors have learned what they know from outside sources, not schools. It makes sense, however, to advocate training in working with new materials like plastics and electronic engineering." 20 | 21 | [09, p298] 22 | HH on interactivity 23 | "A number of things I have made require the participation of the viewer. Otherwise they are dead. I like this physical involvement. It establishes an interdependence between viewer and object. In larger pieces which would not allow handling, I would use photocells to retain this intimate relationship. But, as you know, I have also made things which change independently of the viewer, reacting with their environment." 24 | 25 | 26 | ///// 27 | 28 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 29 | 30 | [07, p279] 31 | uses non-mechanical motion and natural time 32 | 33 | work with water 34 | - freezing, gravity, evaporation, condensation, moisture 35 | 36 | in opposition to tinguely or schoffer and more like calder and rickey 37 | 38 | weather cube (or condensation cube), 1965 39 | 40 | began creating wind and water construction in 1963 41 | - this work was extremely different from previous sculpture, typically appreciated for it's form 42 | 43 | "... array of transparent, plastic boxes filled with colored and clear liquids. These liquids perform various activities -- dripping, trickling, oozing, splashing, and condensing -- in the spirit of turbulent weather conitions or the internal secretion of organisms..." 44 | 45 | can be considered self-organizing and self-stabilizing as a process of water condensing to the surface or wind sculptures, but he does this without electrical or mechanical feedback -- do to gravity and the physical constraints/properties of the materials 46 | 47 | Grass Cube 48 | - most like a living system 49 | - several square feet of grass growing in a thin layer of soil and growing on top of a plexi-glass cube 50 | 51 | cyclical processes which manifest evidences of natural feedback and equilibrium 52 | 53 | "environmental systems philosophy" 54 | 55 | 56 | ///// 57 | 58 | [30] from Peter Seltz 59 | 60 | "...make something which experiences, reacts to the environment, changes, is non-stabile... 61 | ...make something indeterminate, that always looks different, the shape of which cannot be predicted precisely... 62 | ...make something that reacts to light and temperature changes, that is subject to air currents and depends, in its functioning, on the forces of gravity... 63 | ...make something that lives in time and allows the "spectator" to experience time..." 64 | 65 | ///// 66 | 67 | [14] Hulten, The Machine 68 | 69 | Ice Stick, 1966 70 | 71 | in the 1960, his work can be characterized as "collaboration with the forces of nature" 72 | technology exemplified in a refrigeration unit, artificially produces a natural phenomenon: cold 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/Conservation/rinehart_ippolito.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory. Richard Reinhart and John Ippolito. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 2014. 2 | 3 | // 4 | 5 | 1. The Lost and the Saved 6 | 7 | Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt, "both were harbingers of the new media art forms spawned by the digital age." 8 | 9 | Hesse's _Expanded Expansion_ in constrast to LeWitt's _Wall Drawing 146_ 10 | 11 | _Expanded Expansion_ is an installation created by pouring latex over cheesecloth, "you could bunch it together like an accordion on a small wall or stretch it twenty-five feet wide for a longer one." "But gradually the resin darkended, the fabric stiffened, and eventually everything begin to deteriorate." "despite herioic efforts by museum convervators, all that may be left of these remnants of sculptural splendor one day is dust in an archival box." 12 | 13 | "as we shall see, the track record for newer media is even worse than for Hesse's disintegrating polymers. Audiotapes demagnetize. CDs delaminate. Internet art links to websites that no longer exist." 14 | 15 | _Wall Drawing 146_ is "generated by assistants following a predetermined set of instrucitons in their titles." "LeWitt was careful to make his instructions as universal as possible, so his drawings could adapt to new spaces..." "As a result, LeWitt wall drawings are routinely created, painted over, an recreated by various qualified assistants the world over, and have been for four decades. There's no sign that his works are going to disappear any time soon -- or to be more accurate, they disappear all the time, but always stand at the ready for their next reinarnation." 16 | 17 | "In some ways, these two works are beyond the need for a novel preservation paradigm. We are too late to save the Hesse, since the artist died without leaving any solution to her work's failing health; and the LeWitt, which is based on repeating a fairly straightforward set of instructions, doesn't really need expert conservators to stay alive." 18 | 19 | "Nevertheless... the vulnerabilities of digital media are propelling a vast swath of today's culture toward the same fate as that of _Expanded Expansion_ -- but at a rate acceleration ten- or a hundredfold. Movies and mp3s, installation art and interactive games -- all will be lost unless we uncover the underlying causes of today's cultural descrition before it's too late." 20 | 21 | "Triple threat" to twenty-first-century creativity -- technology, institutions, and law 22 | 23 | Rescue techniques: 24 | 25 | STORAGE 26 | 27 | "Storage captures matter and puts it in a box, on a shelf, under glass, in a climate-controlled vault deep in a mountain." 28 | 29 | "Whearas storage is the longest-term strategy for old media, it is the shortest-term solution for new media." 30 | 31 | 32 | EMULATION 33 | 34 | "_Emulation_ means not storing digital files on disk or physical artifacts in the warehouse, but creating an audiovisual facsimile of them." 35 | 36 | "For analog culture, emulation can be costly in time and money, for it may mean custom-fabricating material that once were mass-produced, such as light bulbs or candies." [ref. to Dan Flavin and Félix González-Torres] 37 | 38 | "In digital culture, however, the technique of software emulation--whereby one computer impersonates another--is a powerful preservation tool." 39 | 40 | 41 | MIGRATION 42 | 43 | "Migration often seems more prosaic than emulation, because a migrated work sticks close to the medium of the original, imply upgrading its technology to the current industry standard." 44 | 45 | "...migration can alter a work's look and feel, and the further a work is migrated away from its original medium, the greater the risk of its departing from the spirit of the original." 46 | 47 | 48 | REINTERPRETATION 49 | 50 | "Reinterpretation is the most radical of the four preservation strategies, though also the most powerful. A reinterpretation sacrifices basic aspects of the work's appearance in order to retain the original spirit. Rare for the visual arts, reinterpretation is common in dance the theater..." 51 | 52 | "... a work of software art written in one language may be completely rewritten for a different platform..." 53 | 54 | 55 | The paradigm for "fluidly creating and recreating works" is defined as "variable media" 56 | 57 | "The variable media approach encourages creators to define a work in medium-independent terms so that it can be translated into a new medium once its original format is obsolete." 58 | 59 | // 60 | 61 | 2. New Media and Social Memory 62 | 63 | "Many efforts to preserve new art leap right to logistical problem solving. This is understandable given the urgency of the problem, but, in order to make the fundamental shirts necessary to solve the problem, we also need to understand the historical context an ideological assumptions that underlie the discourse and color our solutions." 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/rath.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Alan Rath 2 | from Alan Rath Robotics, exhibition in SantaFe 3 | 4 | [25, p5] 5 | essay by Louis Grachos, director and curator 6 | Rath manipulates electronics as both formal and metaphorical elements to create inventive sculptures that comment on the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines and that relationship's implications on our present and future. While Rath's education and background are solidly grounded in engineering, his work transgresses science to become art. He employs eniscerated, diliberately physical machine components and anatomically integrated electronics to create his sculpture." 7 | 8 | "Members of his species have varying degrees of perceptual ability: the simplest have no knowledge of the environment; others are able to sense their companion species; and the most complex interact with visitors to the exhibition." 9 | 10 | 11 | [25, p18] 12 | Murray Gell-Mann 13 | "A Rath device has its food, in the form of electrical energy, supplied through a fixed plate in the floor. When, in the course of its wanderings, the sculpture returns to its feeding pad, it can take up energy and be ready for further adventures. Watching as it just misses the pad time after time and then finally reaches it, we feel the kind of sympathy we would normally extend to a living creature." 14 | 15 | "All are programmed to follow a course that is partly deterministic but affected by random perturbations. In that way they illustrate the prevalence, in virtually all kinds of systems, of a combination of regular patterns and randomness." 16 | 17 | "Alan Rath's splendid creations are a powerful reminder of the ubiquity of regularity and chance variation." 18 | 19 | Murray Gell-Mann is Distinguished Fellow and Co-Chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology 20 | 21 | 22 | [25, p34] 23 | born Cincinnati 1959 24 | BS Electrical Engineering from MIT 25 | spent time in CAVS, Visual Language Workshop, Architecure Machine Group 26 | Otto Piene advisor at CAVS 27 | after MIT, assistant to Milton Komisar (computer light sculpture) 28 | 29 | first solo show at Works Gallery in San Jose in 1986 30 | 31 | 32 | [25, p46] 33 | on his Robotic Sculpture by David Ebony 34 | "His machines are not aggressive monsters, nor are they passive or subservient beasts. While their movements hint at human behavior and social interactions, they are not anthropomorphic. Elements in these complex pieces dance together in sensuous rapture or duel without touching in intense mock battles, but they always act in accord with their own cyber-sensibilities." 35 | 36 | Robot dance, Five on Wall = gesture wildly 37 | Inchworm, One Track Minds = graceful strides, spastic thrusts 38 | 39 | [25, p46] 40 | "Rath's sleek, silvery machines are neither futuristic nor nostalgic, Instead,the artist aims for a kind of timeless classicism; he strives to create a machine of perfect balance, proportion, and line." 41 | 42 | One Track Minds - built in motion sensors 43 | 44 | Five on a Wall - high-kicking, gyrating elements have been likened to the precision line dances of the Rockettes 45 | 46 | Friends and Acquaintances 47 | "...is an intricate and wildly exuberant work in which Rath perhaps most convincingly conflates the human, organic, and mechanical. The five elements in the piece -- three freestanding tripods and two wall-mounted metal boxes -- interact with each other in a say that hints at sexual activity and verbal communication. Revealing brightly lit, warm-red interiors, the boxes open and close in response to other elements in the sculpture. Long, rolled-up metal tongues unfurl and protrude in a comic, though rather lurid way to penetrate the open boxes attached to the wall. No lubricating fluids pass from one machine to another, so the implied sexual activity in apparently "safe." Yet, an issue or robot morality is suddenly called into question" 48 | 49 | Rover 50 | "In Rover,the artist's most recent robotic sculpture, motion sensors allow interaction with visitors. The squat, wheeled vehicle emerges from beneath a canopied recharging station as guests arrive. An eye on a small CRT screen at the end of a long rod inspects the intruder like a suspicious watchdog. But there is no sense of menace to this creature. In this piece and in all of this other works, Rath conveys a technological world that is inviting rather than fearful. He has gone to great lengths to counter the technological alienation described by Leo Marx, who wrote "To satisfy the imperatives of technological society, men are called upon to endure an intolerable curbing of their spontaneous, erotic and personal selves." 51 | 52 | "Neither utopian nor dystopian, Rath's visionary art encompasses technology as a cohesive language, one whose subtlety and expressive power matches that of any other art medium." 53 | 54 | interested in experimental machinery not yet "corrupted" by decoration 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/schoffer.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Nicolas Schoffer 2 | 3 | ///// 4 | 5 | [31] Jewish Museum 6 | 7 | 8 | born 1912, Hungary 9 | science worship, strict intellectual plan 10 | calculated and meticulously engineered sculptures 11 | 12 | [31, p10] 13 | "Nicolas Schoffer takes the engineer's optimistic view of the possibilities of a technological society, and work, in effect, for a more rational future." 14 | 15 | 1954 in Paris, his first programmed sculpture 16 | 17 | [31, p11] 18 | CYSP1 cybernetics and spatiodynamics 19 | "The construction moves at different speeds and different directions, emits light and sound, creates color spectacle, and is electronically resonsive to the human presence: certain colors and temperatures make it advance, others cause it to retreat. It is a robot work-of-art, and ingenious dual structure that stimulates and also chills the imagination, for like all purely mechanical spectacle - fireworks, moving colored lights, the play of illuminated fountains - it risks a certain inhumanity, no matter how ingenious or magical its mix of visual affects." 20 | 21 | "Brave New World tones of euphoric social conditioning" 22 | 23 | [31, p18] 24 | CYSP1 completed in collaboration with Philips engineer Francois Terny 25 | first presented at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre, May 26 1956 26 | it dances with living dancers 27 | 28 | [31, p19] 29 | built a gigantic tower in Liege, Belgium 30 | built in collaboration with composer Henri Pousseur 31 | 32 | [31, p20] 33 | Schoffer in his own work, 34 | "The complex programming of these elements brings us to structured ensembles, where cybernetics can maintain an optimum equilibrium in a state of fluctuating permanence." 35 | "The work lives and adapts itself as much to the one who perceives it as the spectator lives and adapts himself to the environments created by the work, which are finally only extensions of himself transcended with a view to his own improvement." 36 | "The visual and audio-visual complex thus created can have deeper repercussions in the psycholphenomenological field of the spectator, can take charge of him, so to speak, stimulate him or relax him, through aesthetic products that are all the more effective as they are non-formalist, and immaterial in their essence, in which durations replace volumes, and temporal rhythms replace the configurations of surfaces" 37 | 38 | 39 | ///// 40 | 41 | [28] Cybernetic Serendipity 42 | 43 | elaborate plans to build large spectacles 44 | 45 | Cybernetic Light Tower to be built at Rond-Point de la Defense, Paris 46 | (Tour Lumiere Cybernetique) 47 | 48 | sound, temperature, traffic flow, humidity affect movement and luminosity 49 | at different times of the day, could communicate different information thought patterns of light (for example, stock market information at 1pmby increasing brightness is market is up or vice versa) 50 | 51 | 307 meters tall, span of 59 meters 52 | square steel tubes filled with concrete and covered with stainless steel 53 | 15 curved mirrors place between the 180 parallel arms 54 | 100 revolving axis on which 330 mirrors are affixed 55 | each 100 axis controlled by a variable speed motor 56 | 57 | [28, p44] 58 | in reference to CYSP1 59 | "Inasmuch as the phenomena are constantly variable, the reactions are likewise ever changing and unpredictable, which endows the mechanism with an almost organic life and sensitivity." 60 | 61 | 62 | ///// 63 | 64 | [07] Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 65 | 66 | before cybernetic sculptures, Schoffer created the Microtemps series 67 | programmed art, not a complete program but small programs slowly permuted through a series of linear cycles. 68 | 69 | [07, p278] 70 | "The Microtemps are table-sized, open boxes with a purced, polished aluminum backgrip, Inside the resulting proscenium space are a group of projecting spindles fitted with plexiglass blocks and metallic reflective surfaces. The spindles with their hardware revolve at variable speeds and are subjected to changing colors from pinpoint illumination. One witnesses not so much the virtual volumes of the spinning forms themselves, as a procession of evolving flickering illuminations of the reflective backdrop." 71 | 72 | although extremely precise, the microtemps are very similar technically to the works of jean tinguely, though they are perceived extremely differently. p278 73 | 74 | [07, p340] 75 | his initial cybernetic sculpture were extremely complex and expensive and where underwritten by the Philips corporations 76 | 77 | the engineer, Jacques Bureau, explains 78 | "The object sought is above all of the experimental order. As for electronic animals, the synthesis of the faculties must be effected very gradually, and the behavior of the "models" man makes of himself must be observed. This exploration by the "models" of physiology, psychology, and sociology marks the opening of a new path in research." 79 | 80 | CYSP1 81 | four motor-powered sets of wheels under 82 | different colors make the blades turn rapidly or lie stationary 83 | move the sculpture about the floor, turn sharp angles, stay still 84 | darkness and silence animate it, 85 | brightness and noise make it still 86 | 87 | [07, p341] 88 | "Ambiguous stimuli, as in the case of Grey Walter's tortoises, produce the unpredictability of an organism." 89 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/krauss.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Rosilind Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture 2 | 3 | INTRODUCTION 4 | 5 | - references Gotthold Lessing's aesthetic treatise on Laocoon 6 | - references Carola Giedion-Welcker's Modern Plastic Art 7 | 8 | Lessing: 9 | static arts (traditional painting and sculpture) can be referred to as simultaneous, they are to be perceived all at once. 10 | 11 | "Lessing asserts that sculpture is as art concerned with the deployment of bodies in space." 12 | 13 | Lessing also adds: 14 | "All bodies, however, exist not only in space, but also in time. They continue and at any moment of their continuance, may assume a different appearance and stand in different relations. Every one of these momentary appearances and groupings was the result of a preceding, may become the cause of a following, and is therefore the center of a present action." 15 | 16 | Krauss asserts that spatial arts cannot be separated from space and time. 17 | 18 | Krauss paraphrasing Carola Giedion-Welcker says that Gabo's work is about using "light to open up matter to an analysis of its structure". 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | FUTURISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM 23 | 24 | Tatlin's constructivism used the properties of the material as the basis of form. Gabo's ideals were to imagine a conceptual form and then build it with the appropriate materials. 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | MECHANICAL BALLETS 29 | 30 | [15, p204] 31 | "It is beyond question that a large number of postwar European and American sculptors became interested both in theatre and in the extended experience of time which seemed part of the conventions of the stage." 32 | 33 | - sculpture was used in theatre as both surrogate performers and for environmental context 34 | 35 | - is it kinetic sculpture or mechanical theatre 36 | 37 | Moholy Nagy's Light Prop (or) Light-Space Modulator 38 | - originally intended as an on-stage projector 39 | 40 | [15, p208] 41 | "Like a human figure, the Light Prop has an internal structure that affects its outward appearance, and, more crucially, an internal source of energy that allows it to move. And, like a human agent, the work is meant to affect its space through the gestures which it makes over a period of time. The fact that these gestures -- the patterns of projected light and the shifting patterns that relate throughout its internal structure -- change in time, and have a complex program, gives the object an even more human, because seemingly volitional, quality. Thus, no matter how abstract its forms and its function, the Light Prop is a kind of robot; the place it was meant to take on stage is that of a mechanical actor." 42 | the light prop is therefore, the descendant of automatons. 43 | 44 | [15, p209] 45 | Behind it stands a far-reaching mimetic impulse, a passion to imitate not simly the look of the living creature but to reproduce as well its animations, its discourse with the passage of time." 46 | 47 | [15, p209, 210] 48 | Krauss on Jack Burnam's 'Beyond Modern Sculpture' 49 | "the most fundamental ambition of sculpture, since its beginnings, is the replication of life." 50 | "The extremely intricate clockwork automata created in the eighteenth century by Vaucanson arose from and satisfied the need to perfect the apearance of lifelikeness in the mechanical creature." 51 | Burnam describes automata as 'subsculpture' and says, "The history of automata has always run close to that of technology." 52 | Krauss points to examples where sculpture does not represent life, calls Burnam's book technocratic (it defines technology as morally neutral) and criticizes him. 53 | 54 | "constructivist analytic mode of sculpture" 55 | 56 | "In terms of the sophistication of its technology, Light Prop stands midway on a spectrum of the artist's use of movement to endow the sculptural object with the animate qualities of the human actor. At the more primitive end of this spectrum one would locate the work of Alexander Calder, an American Contemporary of Moholy-Nagy's, with its mechanical simplicity reflecting the naive and humorous direction of its content. On the other, more complex, end, one would place the work of Nicolas Schoffer, whose use of computers makes the sculptural ensemble visibly responsive to its environment -- to the point where a piece such as CYSP I (cybernetic-spatiodynamic construction) utilizes control devices to allow the sculptural array to respond to changes in ambient sound and light. 'Different colors make its blades turn rapidly or lie stationary, move the sculpture about the floor, turn sharp right angles or stay still. Darkness and silence animate the sculpture, while brightness and noise make it still. Ambiguous stimuli ... produce the unpredictability of the organism." 57 | 58 | Schoffer, Tinguely, Takis and the new tendency sculptors "implant the sculpture with sophisticated devices to give one the sense that its animation has been motivated by some aspect of the sculpture's environment" Calder also, but with less technology. 59 | 60 | Calder's mobiles have a 'delicate equilibrium' 61 | 62 | [15, p216] 63 | from Calder "When I use two circles of wire intersecting at right angles, this to me is a sphere ... what I produce is not precisely what I have in mind -- but a sort of sketch, a man-made approximation. 64 | 65 | virtual volume 66 | 67 | [15, p216] 68 | "The path of Calder's mobiles leads from Gabo's abstract geometries to the anthropomorphic content of the body's intermittent action." 69 | 70 | Calders sculptures have INTERMITTENT motion rather than MECHANICALLY CONTINUOUS motion, which gives them more of a relation to the body (or organisms) than to machines. 71 | 72 | [15, p220] 73 | mobile, meaning something that moves, also means 'motive' in French 74 | the course of mobiles did not provide for artistic variation. Calder and George Rickey were able to have a strong voice. Rickey's mobiles utilize a 'knife-edge fulcrum' technique and use plane geometry in opposition to the curvilinear vocabulary of Calder. mobile production was intense in the 1960s, led into... 75 | 76 | objects with internal movement 77 | "Automatically programmed and specifically staged as performances, this sculpture is meant to "enact" itself. 78 | 79 | Len Lye, The Loop (there is a good quote in Burnam) 80 | 81 | "unfolding temporal and dramatic events" 82 | 83 | kinesthetic 84 | 85 | [15, p 220] 86 | little info on Tinguely and Bury 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/calder.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Alexander Calder b1898 in Philadelphia 2 | 3 | ///// 4 | 5 | Rosalind Krauss Passages in Modern Sculpture 6 | 7 | from a technical point of view, calder is simple, moholy-nagy is medium, schoffer is complex ... but which is the most appealing? 8 | 9 | animation is being motivated by the environment, calder was able to do this with minimal technology 10 | 11 | 12 | Schoffer, Tinguely, Takis and the new tendency sculptors "implants the sculpture with sophisticated devices to give one the sense that its animation has been motivated by some aspect of the sculpture's environment" Calder also, but with less technology. 13 | 14 | Calder's mobiles have a 'delicate equilibrium' 15 | 16 | [15, p216] 17 | from Calder "When I use two circles of wire intersecting at right angles, this to me is a sphere ... what I produce is not precisely what I have in mind -- but a sort of sketch, a man-made approximation. 18 | - this makes calder a basic constructivist in approach 19 | 20 | virtual volume 21 | 22 | [15, p216] 23 | "The path of Calder's mobiles leads from Gabo's abstract geometries to the anthropomorphic content of the body's intermittent action." 24 | 25 | Calder's sculptures have INTERMITTENT motion rather than MECHANICALLY CONTINUOUS motion, which gives them more of a relation to the body (or organisms) than to machines. 26 | 27 | 28 | ///// 29 | 30 | Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 31 | 32 | "Calder in all seriousness explored a considerable area of present Kinetic activity before settling on the hanging mobiles. In the process of exploration ... Calder touched upon many ideas in Kinetics, but developed few. Yet certain types of constructions by Tinguely, Jesus-Raphael Soto, Walter Linck, Harry Kramer, Julio LeParc, Yaacov Agam, and Rickey -- a good portion of the front-rank Kineticists -- have in common elements explored by Calder in the period between 1931 and 1936." 33 | - unstable objects hung in front of a panel producing random shadows 34 | - sculpture propelled by pumped liquids 35 | - elements interchangable by hand 36 | - hand-driven cams and crank trains 37 | 38 | Calder needed to work in a medium less restrained than mechanical machinery 39 | 40 | [07, p233] 41 | "Calder's particular temperment demanded a physical configuration more sensuous and free-wheeling than any producible with machines. Calder chose to explore sculptural means, in the traditional sense, more than mechanical potentialities." 42 | 43 | where are kinetic innovators 1925-1955? 44 | 45 | [07, p232] 46 | in 1930 Calder visited the studio of Mondrian, after which he stopped making his representational wire constructions and made geometric constructions from wood, wire, sheet metal. through the 30's he experimented with different types of kinetic movement, machine and not. 47 | 48 | 49 | ///// 50 | 51 | from The Machine As Seen . . . 52 | 53 | his circus originally made him famous in the Paris art world of the late 1920s 54 | 55 | began making moving objects in early 1930s, small motors, hand-crank 56 | 57 | duchamp gave the work the name of mobile 58 | 59 | his first show not understood, the photograph in the press referred to this work likening it to a gear shift 60 | 61 | [14, p150] 62 | calder, 1951 quote 63 | "... the underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from. 64 | What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interladen with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form. 65 | When I have used spheres or discs, I have intended that they should represent more than what they just are. ... A ball of wood or a disc of metal is rather a dull object without this sense of something emanating from it. 66 | When I use two circles of wire intersecting at right angles, this to me is a sphere ... what I produce is not precisely what I have in mind -- but a sort of sketch, a man-made approximation." 67 | 68 | used motors to solve an aesthetic problem, why should one position of a form be better than another 69 | 70 | [14, p151] 71 | "I also used to drive some of my mobiles with small electric motors, and though I have abandoned this to some extent now, I still like the idea, because you can produce a positive instead of a fitful movement -- though on occasions I like that too. With a mechanical drive, you can control the thing like the choreography in a ballet and superimpose various movements: a great number, even, by means of cams and other mechanical devices. To combine one or two simple movements with different periods, however, really fives the finest effect, because while simple, they are capable of infinite combinations." 72 | 73 | calder rejected the motor in 1935 in favor of wind or hands 74 | 75 | 76 | ///// 77 | 78 | The Movement 79 | 80 | Jean-Paul Satre on Calder's Mobiles 81 | " If it is true that sculpture must engrave movement in an immobile substance, it would be wrong to relate Calder's art to that of the sculptor. He does not suggest movement, he catches it; his intention is not to bury it forever in bronze or in gold, those glorious and stupid materials, doomed by nature to immobility. With trivial and base substances, with tiny bones or tin or zinc, he puts together strange arrangements of stems and palms, disks, feathers, petals, These are resonators, traps, they dangle at the end of a string like a spider at the end of its thread or else they pile up on a base, dull, supine, as if asleep; when a stray gust passes, it gets tangles up in them, stirs them into motion, they channel it and give it a fugitive form: a Mobile is born." 82 | 83 | also refers to a Mobile as "an object defined by its movement and which does not exist independently of it." 84 | 85 | ///// 86 | 87 | Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art 88 | 89 | [23, p146] 90 | Sartre on Calder 91 | "Most of the time, he is not imitating anything. I know of no art that is less mendacious than his. Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth and light. Calder suggests nothing: he captures real live movements and shapes them for his purposes. His mobiles do not signify anything, or refer to anything, outside themselves. They are - and that is all there is to say. They are absolutes." 92 | "In a word, although Calder has not made any attempt to imitate - since his only intention is to create scales and accords of movement which are not yet known - his works are at once lyrical inventions, technical - almost mathematical - assemblages, and accessible symbols for Nature, that huge vague Nature which scatters pollen in all directions and abruptly brings about the flight of a thousand butterflies, about whom we never know if she is a blind succession of causes and effects or the timid, constantly retarded, deranged adn impeded development of an Idea." 93 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ProcessHistory.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | [DRAFT 15 JUNE 2016] 2 | 3 | ###The History of the Process Works 4 | 5 | The Process series of works started in 2004 and it's ongoing. The first phase was concluded in 2010 with the Process Compendium exhibition and publication. The Process Compendium archives Process 4 - 18. Each Process work is a text that defines a choreographic system. The text is interpreted in code and is displayed as software. A Process text might have more than one software interpretation, e.g. _Process 18 (Software 1)_, _Process 18 (Software 2)_, etc. The complete set of Process texts created to date, as well as a general description of the metasystem is the [Process Compendium text.](./ProcessCompendium.md) In addition to the complete list of texts, the Process work from 2004-2010 is archived as two editions of fifteen c-prints, [Set A](http://reas.com/compendium_a_p/) and [Set B](http://reas.com/compendium_b_p/). 6 | 7 | The Process series starts its numbering at 4 because of a series of texts titled Structure 1 - 3 that came before. This set of texts was completed as a part of the [_{Software} Structures_](http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/) project, commissioned by the Whitney Museum's Artport in 2004. The _{Software} Structures_ essay, texts, and code opened the way to the Process series. The name was changed from _Structure_ to _Process_ to better describe the choreographic intent of the texts. 8 | 9 | The first public exhibition of works from the Process series was the _Process / Drawing_ show at the bitforms gallery from 4 March - 3 April 2005. This show debuted Process 4, Process 5, and Process 6 as well as archival pigment prints related to the texts and other works and collaborations. At this time, the Process works were installed with the instructions and software side by side. As shown in Figure 1, the instructions were printed as archival pigment prints and attached to the wall behind a thin sheets of plexiglass. The software was run on custom-built PCs without cases. The PC pieces were screwed to the wall near the floor. Monitors (17" LCD) were mounted at eye level with cables running between the PCs and the screens. 10 | 11 | ![Figure 1](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2005-bitforms.jpg "Figure 1") 12 | _Figure 1. Process 5 at the bitforms gallery in spring 2005._ 13 | 14 | When the the same work was presented at the DAM Gallery in Berlin in the fall of 2005, the format had changed slightly. As shown in Figure 2, the software was running on Mac Mini computers with their covers removed in place of the custom-built PCs. 15 | 16 | ![Figure 2](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2005-DAM.jpg "Figure 2") 17 | _Figure 2. Process 6 at the DAM Gallery in fall 2005._ 18 | 19 | The _Process / Form_ show at the bitforms gallery from 6 March - 12 April 2008 was the first to present the Process works as single-channel dyptych projections. As shown in Figure 3, the Process _surface_ is presented side by side with the Process _diagram_. The surface is an interpretation of the Process text and the diagram reveals the Elements that are constructing the surface. Each side is a complementary view into the choreography defined by the texts. The Process text appears on the left, adjacent to the Process image. The Element text appears on the right, adjacent to the Element diagram. The text is either silkscreened onto the wall or applied as vinyl letters. The projected image is thrown onto two prepared wood panels that are hung away from the wall and painted with a projection-screen paint called Screen Goo. Figure 4 shows the fabrication diagram for the panels. Process 14 and Process 18 were debuted in this exhibition, along with a group of related c-prints and objects. 20 | 21 | ![Figure 3](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2008-bitforms.jpg "Figure 3") 22 | _Figure 3. Process 14 and 18 at the bitforms gallery in spring 2008._ 23 | 24 | ![Figure 4](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2008-panels.png "Figure 4") 25 | _Figure 4. Fabrication diagram for the projection panels in use 2008 - 2012._ 26 | 27 | The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami presented the most refined presentation of the single-channel Process dyptychs in the Abstract Cinema show from 26 March - 10 May 2009. Figure 5 shows Process 16 as presented in a black-box room using one of the same projectors and projection panel sets from the bitforms exhibition the year prior. 28 | 29 | ![Figure 5](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2009-miami.jpg "Figure 5") 30 | _Figure 5. Process 16 at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami in spring 2009._ 31 | 32 | The _Field Conditions_ exhibition at the SFMOMA was the next evolution of the Process works. For this exhibition, Process 7 was re-imagined as a two-channel work for vertical 55" LCD screens. The screens were bright (800 nits) and had 2mm wide frames to help the hardware to disappear. The video cables were snaked through the wall and into a closet so the computer and other hardware were not in view. As shown in Figure 6, the most radical change for this installation was the decision to remove the Process and Element texts from the wall adjacent to the screens. In the context of the museum, where didactics are used for all works, this was the best way to convey the information. As of 2016, this remains the ideal way to display the Process works. 33 | 34 | ![Figure 6](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2012-sfmoma.jpg "Figure 6") 35 | _Figure 6. Process 7 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in fall 2012._ 36 | 37 | Part of the ten-year evolution in displaying the Process works is related to how technologies advanced, which is interelated to the budgets available for equipment to display the work. Another aspect of these changes was exploring improved ways to present the work through iteration and experience. The primary work, the text and the way the software was constructured from the text, was consistent throughout the seven years leading up the the Compendium and it remains the same today. Despite the changes in display format, the core work was constant. 38 | 39 | As an aside, the careful reader of the [Process Compendium text](./ProcessCompendium.md) will notice the dates of the works are not in order. For example, Process 18 was completed in 2007 while Process 10 was completed in 2010. The order number (4, 5, 6, etc.) was given when the works were started. Some works were finished more quickly than others. 40 | 41 | In addition to the Process works created as direct interpretations of the texts, other works including prints, objects, performances, and installations were developed from the Process texts. These works are open to more subjective interpretations of the texts through looser choreography and adding color outside of the gray values defined in the text. A few of these works are shown in Figures 7 - 9, but since 2004 there have been nearly eighty unique works created within the Process series. 42 | 43 | ![Figure 7](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2005-bank.jpg "Figure 7") 44 | _Figure 7. Process 10 (Installation 1) a. k. a. TI at the BANK gallery in Los Angeles, 2005._ 45 | 46 | ![Figure 8](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2006-seoul.jpg "Figure 8") 47 | _Figure 8. Process 11 (Installation 1) at the bitforms gallery Seoul, 2006._ 48 | 49 | ![Figure 9](https://github.com/REAS/studio/blob/master/images/process-history/2010-DAM.jpg "Figure 9") 50 | _Figure 9. Detail of Process 18 c-prints at the DAM Gallery, 2010._ 51 | 52 | 53 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /notes/KineticSculpture/burnham.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Jack Burnam, Beyond Modern Sculpture 2 | 3 | Part One : Sculpture as Object 4 | Part Two : Sculpture as System 5 | 6 | INTRODUCTION 7 | 8 | [07, p2] 9 | the term 'technics' is a combination of science and technology 10 | 11 | [07, p5] 12 | "What connects art to science is an abiding similarity between the artistic and scientific mind : it is as if both were motivated by the same pangs of discovery and a desire for the consummation of ideas into beautiful totalities." 13 | 14 | [07, p10] 15 | "The object denotes sculpture in its traditional physical form, whereas the system (an interacting assembly of varying complexity) it the means by which sculpture gradually departs from its object state and assumes some measure of likelike activity." 16 | 17 | 18 | CHAPTER FIVE, SCULPTURE AND AUTOMATA 19 | 20 | human and animal replicas created over the last ten thousand years. 21 | fetishes, idols, amulets, funeral images, dolls, waxworks, manikins, puppets, and automata -- all below sculpture as a fine art. 22 | 23 | [07, p185] 24 | "Automata may be defined as all seemingly self-propelled or self-animated images of animals or men. The history of automata has always run close to that of technology. Both feats of automata and the progression of outward forms assumed by automata indicate a parallel pulse in modern art and technology." 25 | 26 | 27 | CHAPTER SIX, KINETICISM: THE UNREQUITED ART 28 | 29 | [07, p218] 30 | quote from Jean Tinguely 31 | "For me, the machine is above all an instrument that permits me to be poetic. If you respect the machine, if you enter into a game with the machine, then perhaps you can make a truly joyous machine -- be joyous, I mean free." 32 | 33 | //definitions in terms 34 | kinetic places emphasis on _motion_ and its effects, not intelligence, anthropomorphism, temporal sequence, or coordination (these were all goals of automata). Concerned with motions resulting from forces directly connected to physical systems. 35 | 36 | Kineticism and Kineticist were coined by the American art historian Willoughby Sharp to "distinguish interest in the artistic effects of motion" 37 | 38 | Kinematics was defined in 1830 by Andre Ampere as the nature of machine relations being about direction and velocity of _motions_ as opposed to forces. ideal. motions unattached to forces or objects 39 | 40 | !!! kinetic is about materiality and kinematics is about ideals. 41 | 42 | [07, p221] 43 | "Tinguely speaks of making a 'joyous machine' -- one that is, in fact 'free'. This freedom is actually an attempt to divert the essential restrictive nature of the machine. Artists have been all too conscious of the machine's propensity to restrict change and their desire has been to allow the machines new degrees of freedom -- even, on occasion, by destroying it." 44 | 45 | [07, p220] 46 | "for the first time in art, outside the area of pure automata, Kinetic Art presents the baffling problem of an art form in which essential parts of its working order are purposely hidden from the observer. Often are effects without visible cause." 47 | 48 | [07, p218] 49 | "Compared to automata, what is Kinetic Art? Most specifically, Kinetic Art has been a gradual attempt throughout this century to produce nonrepresentational art using the parameters of real time and motion. Unlike automata development, it has not been an art rooted in traditional craftsmanship and mechanical competence. Instead, Kinetic Art has been a product of makeshift necessity, stemming from deeply felt needs of avant-garde painters and sculptors. Besides an unwillingness to produce realistic facsimiles of men and animals, the short history of Kinetic Art has been marked by the comparative mechanical incompetence of its champions. What slight technical facility Kinetic Artists have demonstrated has usually been the result of technical assistance contributed by sympathetic technicians. ... The technician has consistently failed to make machinery conform to the older aesthetic precepts of our culture; instead, it has been the artist who was forced to try and make his art relevant to the prevailing technology. The Kinetic Artist, along with his enemies, has often sensed that he has united his art with forces inherently at odds with artistic endeavor. Even the engineer with his superior training has so far not produced superior Kinetic Art, usually the opposite. Successful Kinetic Art until now has either defied or trivialized the principles of mechanical invention." 50 | 51 | [07, p270] 52 | Len Lye on Loop 53 | "The Loop, a twenty-two foot strip of polished steel, is formed into a band, which rests on its back on a magnetized bed. The action starts when the charged magnets pull the loop of steel downwards, and then release it suddenly. As it struggles to resume its natural shape, the steel band bounds upwards and lurches from end to end with simultaneous leaping and rocking motions, orbiting powerful reflections at the viewer and emitting fanciful musical tones which pulsate in rhythm with The Loop. Occasionally, as the boundless Loop reaches its greatest height, it strikes a suspended ball, causing it to emit a different yet harmonic musical note, and so it dances to a weird quavering composition of its own making." 54 | 55 | !!! 56 | [07, p221] 57 | talks about totalitarian machines, philosophy of the 19th century and how artists responded in the 20th century... 58 | 59 | [07, p223] 60 | E.J. Marey and E. Muybridge produced the first scientific record of organic motion. 61 | Marey analyzed birds in flight from different camera angles 62 | Muybridge was more interested in 2D representations 63 | 64 | organic kinematics 65 | birds in flight, trotting horses, people walking down stairways 66 | 67 | [07, p227] 68 | "Yet, by aesthetic inversion, Duchamp had transformed the wheel into an optical device." 69 | 70 | 71 | CHAPTER EIGHT, ROBOT AND CYBORG ART 72 | 73 | [07, p312] 74 | quote from Weiner's Human Use of Human Beings (p9) 75 | "To indicate the role of the message in man, let us compare human activity with activity of a very different sort; namely, the activity of the little dancing figures which dance on top of a music box. These figures dance in accordance with a pattern, but it is a pattern which is set in advance, and in which the past activity of the figures ahs practically nothing to do with the pattern of their future activity. There is a message, indeed [one way] but it goes from the machinery of the music box to the figures, and stops there. The figures themselves have not a trace of any communication with the outer world, except this one-way stage of communication with the music box. They are blind, deaf, and dumb, and cannot vary their activity in the least from the conventional pattern." 76 | - this applies to nearly all free-standing kinetic sculpture in existence. 77 | they to not 'respond to man in any intelligent fashion'. "They are dead souls made alive through 'art' and prearranged mechanized motion." 78 | 79 | all living creatures communicate with their environments and other beings within it 80 | 81 | reciprocated messages are the primary ways that being communicate with each other 82 | 83 | traditional art is a one-way communication, one-way message 84 | 85 | // my comment 86 | traditional art is an open system, no feedback 87 | 88 | 89 | ----> 90 | 91 | [07, p313] 92 | "In the past such an interaction was impossible -- or at best a very one-sided affair. It was, to place it within a cybernetic context, a relationship between a complex, self-stabilizing, goal seeking system(man) and an inert object (a stone statue perhaps) -- or man and a work of art designed as a mechanical system seeking stability through pseudo-random motion (a Calder mobile) -- or man and an aesthetic system with a determinate but very complex program (motion pictures, symphonic music, Kinetic Art. etc.). Still, the result in every case was not communication but one-way stimlation for the human party involved." 93 | 94 | Julio Le Parc wrote a critique about art-view relationships 95 | 96 | cyborg art - the cybernetic organism as an art form ( this is possibly the last and ultimate stage of sculpture ) 97 | 98 | a calder mobile does not act any more than a ball of yarn batted by a kitten 99 | 100 | cybernetic had its origins in mathematical information processing and the development of control mechanisms for adaptable machines 101 | Norbert Wiener published Cybernectics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. 102 | -- the dream of the automaton creators 103 | -- a fusing together of pure mathematics, electrical engineering, and neurophysiology into a science explaining the organization of complex systems -- systems which think and show some degree of environmental adaptability. 104 | 105 | [07, p315] 106 | negative feedback - fractional return of the energy output of a system in the form of information guiding the system's future activities 107 | 108 | cybernetics is primarily a science of organization 109 | 110 | the principle of homeostasis 111 | 112 | [07, p318] 113 | systems 114 | "The concept system itself is a pure abstraction, an assembly of isolable properties studied in terms of their transformations, either alone (closed) or in relation to other systems (open)." 115 | 116 | a property of all systems is stability or instability 117 | the most stable system is an inert object with no moving parts 118 | 119 | another important principle of system and organization is 'coupling'. putting pieces together 120 | 121 | [07, p319] 122 | instability 123 | "Instability lies inherent in all systems and the probability that it will appear rises at an exponential rate as the systems include more moving parts and higher levels of complexity. In effect, the Kinetic sculptor is no longer building objects with potentially infinite life spans, but systems with a life that in many cases can be predicted." 124 | 125 | - kinetic sculpture must be checked and serviced like an automobile 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 134 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ProcessCompendium.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Process Compendium, 2 | Casey Reas (2004 - present) 3 | Updated 20 August 2010 4 | 5 | // 6 | 7 | An Element is a simple machine that is comprised of a Form and one or more Behaviors. A Process defines an environment for Elements and determines how the relationships between the Elements are visualized. For instance, Element 1 takes the form of a circle and one of its behaviors moves it along a straight line at a constant speed. Process 4 fills a surface with Element 1 and draws a line between elements while they overlap. Each Process is a short text that defines a space to explore through multiple interpretations. A Process interpretation in software is a kinetic drawing machine with a beginning but no defined end. It proceeds one step at a time, and at each discrete step, every Element modifies itself according to its behaviors. The corresponding visual forms emerge as the Elements change; each adjustment adds to the previously drawn shapes. During the last seven years, I have continuously refined the system of Forms, Behaviors, Elements, and Processes. The phenomenon of emergence is the core of the exploration and each artwork builds on previous works and informs the next. The system is idiosyncratic and pseudo-scientific, containing references ranging from the history of mathematics to the generation of artificial life. The Process Compendium 2004-2010 consists of two editions of fifteen prints that document Process 4 to Process 18. In each case, two static images have been selected from an infinite number of potential variations. This book documents these prints, alternate software interpretations, and the emergence of the forms through a series of time-lapse images. 8 | 9 | // 10 | 11 | The most important element of Process is the text. The text is the Process described in English, written with the intent to translate its content into software. The Elements, Forms, and Behaviors referenced within the Process text are defined in the Library. The software interpretation is secondary to the text. The text leaves many decisions open to the programmer, decisions that must be made using personal judgment. The act of translating the Process from English into a machine language interprets the text. Process was implemented by into the language in . The hardware is inconsequential and in time it will fail. It was selected to be robust, but electronic devices are fragile. If a component of the hardware fails, it may be replaced without diminishing the work. Eventually, compatible components won't be available. When this happens, a new hardware system must be acquired and the software modified for the new platform. 12 | 13 | 14 | The Elements, Forms, and Behaviors referenced within the Processes are defined in the Library: 15 | 16 | Forms 17 | `F1: Circle ` 18 | `F2: Line ` 19 | 20 | 21 | Behaviors 22 | `B1: Move in a straight line` 23 | `B2: Constrain to surface ` 24 | `B3: Change direction while touching another Element` 25 | `B4: Move away from an overlapping Element ` 26 | `B5: Enter from the opposite edge after moving off the surface` 27 | `B6: Orient toward the direction of an Element that is touching ` 28 | `B7: Deviate from the current direction` 29 | 30 | 31 | Elements 32 | `E1: F1 + B1 + B2 + B3 + B4` 33 | `E2: F1 + B1 + B5` 34 | `E3: F2 + B1 + B3 + B5` 35 | `E4: F1 + B1 + B2 + B3` 36 | `E5: F2 + B1 + B5 + B6 + B7` 37 | 38 | // 39 | 40 | Process 20 41 | 42 | TK 43 | 44 | // 45 | 46 | Process 19 47 | 48 | TK 49 | 50 | // 51 | 52 | Process 18 53 | 54 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 5, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a quadrilateral connecting the endpoints of each pair of Elements that are touching. Increase the opacity of the quadrilateral while the Elements are touching and decrease while they are not. 55 | 56 | Implemented by Casey Reas 57 | Summer 2007, Winter 2008 58 | Processing 125 / 135 59 | 60 | // 61 | 62 | Process 17 63 | 64 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 5, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a transparent circle at the midpoint of each Element. Increase a circle?s size and opacity while its Element is touching another Element and decrease while it is not. 65 | 66 | Implemented by Casey Reas 67 | Summer 2010 68 | Processing 1.1 69 | 70 | // 71 | 72 | Process 16 73 | 74 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 3, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a tiny, transparent circle at the midpoint of each Element. Increase a circle?s size and opacity while its Element is touching another Element and decrease while it is not. 75 | 76 | Implemented by Casey Reas 77 | Fall 2006 78 | Processing 121 79 | 80 | // 81 | 82 | Process 15 83 | 84 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 3, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a small, transparent circle at the midpoint of each Element. Increase the circle?s opacity while its Element is touching another Element and decrease while it is not. 85 | 86 | Implemented by Casey Reas 87 | Fall 2006 88 | Processing 121 89 | 90 | // 91 | 92 | Process 14 93 | 94 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 4, each with a different size and direction. Display the intersections by drawing a circle at each point of contact. Set the size of each circle relative to the distance between the centers of the overlapping Elements. Draw the smallest possible circle as white and the largest as black, with varying grays representing sizes in between. 95 | 96 | Implemented by Casey Reas 97 | Fall 2006, Winter 2008 98 | Processing 122, 135 99 | 100 | // 101 | 102 | Process 13 103 | 104 | Bisect a rectangular surface and define the dividing line as the origin for a large group of Element 1. When each Element moves beyond the surface, move its position back to the origin. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to black and the longest to white, with varying grays representing values in between. 105 | 106 | Implemented by Casey Reas 107 | Fall 2009, Summer 2010 108 | Processing 1.0 109 | 110 | // 111 | 112 | Process 12 113 | 114 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 3, each with a different size and gray value. Draw a dot at the center of each line. Draw a quadrilateral connecting the endpoints of each pair of Elements that are touching. Increase the opacity of the dot and quadrilateral while the Elements are touching and decrease while they are not. 115 | 116 | Implemented by Casey Reas 117 | Fall 2006 118 | Processing 121 119 | 120 | // 121 | 122 | Process 11 123 | 124 | A rectangular surface filled with instances of Element 2, each with a different size, speed, and direction. Display the intersections by drawing a circle at each point of contact. Set the size of one circle to be relative to the distance between the centers of the overlapping Elements and make the other circle tiny. Draw the smallest possible circle as white and largest as black, with varying grays representing sizes in between. 125 | 126 | Implemented by Casey Reas 127 | Summer, Fall 2006 128 | Processing 115 129 | 130 | // 131 | 132 | Process 10 133 | 134 | Position a circle at the center of a rectangular surface. Set the center of the circle as the origin for a large group of Element 1. When an Element moves beyond the edge of its circle, return to the origin. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to black and the longest to white, with varying grays representing values in between. 135 | 136 | Implemented by Casey Reas 137 | Fall 2005 138 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 139 | 140 | // 141 | 142 | Process 9 143 | 144 | Position three large circles on a rectangular surface. Set the center of each circle as the origin for a large group of Element 2. When an Element moves beyond the edge of its circle, return to the origin. Display the intersections by drawing a circle at each point of contact. Set the size of each circle relative to the distance between the centers of the overlapping Elements. Draw the smallest possible circle as white and largest as black, with varying grays representing sizes in between. 145 | 146 | Implemented by Casey Reas 147 | Fall 2005 148 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 149 | 150 | // 151 | 152 | Process 8 153 | 154 | A rectangular surface densely filled with instances of Element 2, each with a different size, speed, and direction. Display the intersections by drawing a circle at each point of contact. Set the size of each circle relative to the distance between the centers of the overlapping Elements. Draw the smallest possible circle as black and largest as white, with varying grays representing sizes in between. 155 | 156 | Implemented by Casey Reas 157 | Summer 2005 158 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 159 | 160 | // 161 | 162 | Process 7 163 | 164 | A rectangular surface filled with varying sizes of Element 1. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to white and the longest to black, with varying grays representing values in between. Draw the perimeter of each Element as a black line and the center as a white dot. 165 | 166 | Implemented by Casey Reas 167 | Summer 2005 168 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 169 | 170 | // 171 | 172 | Process 6 173 | 174 | Position three large circles on a rectangular surface. Set the center of each circle as the origin for a large group of Element 1. When an Element moves beyond the edge of its circle, return to the origin. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to black and the longest to white, with varying grays representing values in between. 175 | 176 | Implemented by Casey Reas 177 | Winter 2005 178 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 179 | 180 | // 181 | 182 | Process 5 183 | 184 | A rectangular surface filled with varying sizes of Element 1. Draw the perimeter of each Element as a black line and the center as a white dot. Draw a gray line from the centers of Elements that are touching. 185 | 186 | Implemented by Casey Reas 187 | Winter 2005 188 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 189 | 190 | // 191 | 192 | Process 4 193 | 194 | A rectangular surface filled with varying sizes of Element 1. Draw a line from the centers of Elements that are touching. Set the value of the shortest possible line to black and the longest to white, with varying grays representing values in between. 195 | 196 | Implemented by Casey Reas 197 | Winter 2005 198 | C++/OpenGL, Processing 115 199 | 200 | // 201 | 202 | Process 3, 2, 1 203 | 204 | The first three Process works are named Structure 1, 2, and 3. They were created for the {Software} Structures project, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art's ARTPORT in 2004. Although the Process works originated from the Structure works, they are separate projects. There is more information at the URL: http://artport.whitney.org 205 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ThoughtsOnSoftware.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | [ Draft 05 / 22 January 2016, title changed 15 July ] 2 | 3 | 4 | ###THOUGHTS ON SOFTWARE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS 5 | 6 | I make things — all the time. In the studio, I use tools every day. Some of the tools are “hard” like a screwdriver but most of them are “soft.” I move back and forth between making software tools, using my tools, and using tools created by others. 7 | 8 | I need to have precise control of my tools to form my ideas and I need to be able to modify my tools to explore new ideas. I want to believe that I can form unique ideas, in contrast to accepting the ideas that are encoded into the software tools that I’m using. Through the tools that I make, modify, and use, I sometimes feel like I am in control and sometimes I feel like my ideas are heavily biased by software that others have made. This is the quandary that I’m thinking about today. 9 | 10 | 11 | ####IDEA 12 | 13 | I have ideas about how software tools can be improved for myself and communities of other creators. I want to be a part of creating a future that I have experienced only in fits and starts in the recent past and present. I have seen independent creators build local and networked communities to share intellectual resources and tools. The individuals in these communities share the responsibility to contribute ideas and infrastructure to making their own tools. It’s an aspiration toward a way of making and sharing that has been strongest in one area of the visual arts, the world of creator-programmers. I want to try to scale it within that context and I also want to know if it’s applicable to other areas. 14 | 15 | The converse to this is more widespread. In this model, creators pay software companies to license the tools that the software company has defined and produced. The essence is paying a company to make decisions about software tools in exchange for not having to conceive one’s own tools. 16 | 17 | Both of the models described above break down in wide practice and both are ideals from different points of view. One privileges flexibility, freedom, and collective responsibility and the other promises ease of use in exchange for payment. Because neither model works well in the present, I suggest that we should work toward a model that empowers creators to control their own tools. 18 | 19 | This isn’t an argument for one economic system over another, it’s about shared infrastructure for creative work with a collective goal to create flexible tools. It’s about empowering people to create through access to tools and platforms. This is also not an argument about dissolving intellectual property and copyrights; it’s about finding a balance between shared common infrastructure and individual ownership. 20 | 21 | This aspiration is possible through free software where the word free relates to “freedom”, not “free lunch” — because we all know there is no such thing. Along with free software, we also need open standards and collective desire to be in control of our platforms and tools. 22 | 23 | The contrast to this model is proprietary knowledge and resources. Today, creative communities rely almost exclusively on for-profit corporations to create and control their tools. Companies package what could be modular, general systems into a monolithic, proprietary products. The result is that it’s easy to color correct a photograph if you have the financial resources for the product or you are willing to break the law by using a cracked copy, but creative control is stifled when an idea is outside the boundaries of a product that can’t be extended or adapted. 24 | 25 | So far, this short text has been general and vague, but I want to be specific and clear. As one case study, I will discuss the development of the Processing software that I co-founded in 2001 with Ben Fry. Processing is one example of a free, open, and modular software system with a focus on collaboration and community. It’s the example that I know intimately inside and out so I will use it to reflect on the ideas sketched out in the first part of this text. 26 | 27 | 28 | ####PLATFORM 29 | 30 | The Processing software is an integrated programming language and environment. It’s primarily for students and professionals within the visual arts including design, art, and architecture, but it has evolved in time to find a place within the humanities and sciences, even including university computer science programs and high school math and science classes. 31 | 32 | From the start, Processing was created as free and open-source software (FOSS) to be accessible and flexible. By access, we mean two things. First, that people can get it; it can be downloaded without cost — it’s “free.” Second, we mean that it can be understood by a general audience. Processing is simple, but not simplified. We aspire to make the interface easy to use and the documentation clear and free of unnecessary technical jargon. 33 | 34 | Ben and I grew up with the first generation of home computers and the culture surrounding them permeated our environments. Computers were simpler then and the code was too. Everything felt possible and we were ready.The hardware and software was designed to be modified and diagrams and code for both were often shared. It was expected that a computer user was also a computer programmer — how else would you make the machine do what you wanted it to? If you liked games, you could write your own. If you liked music, you could write a program to help you compose. The computer was an environment for creation and authorship. To reference Howard Rheingold, computers were Tools for Thought. 35 | 36 | About fifteen years later when we were in our twenties, we experienced and participated in the initial spread of the world wide web. The web extended values from decades prior — it accelerated the promise of more universal access to information, of creating new kinds of communities, and of breaking down hierarchies. These values are shared with the origins of Processing. 37 | 38 | As an example, in the first years of the web, many people learned to create web pages by reading sites’ HTML directly through the “View Source” feature built into browsers. Inspired by this open quality, the early versions of Processing had an export feature that, by default, included the source code as well as a web-ready files that could be uploaded to a server to share the work with an international audience. 39 | 40 | Processing was positioned in a unique space when it was first launched in 2001. It wasn’t a tool to make programming easy for visual artists in the tradition of Hypercard and Director. It also wasn’t a programming language for professionals in the tradition of C++ and Java. It was a place between, a middle ground where visual artists and designers could be confident with their ability to work with form and images while learning programming and engineers could be confident in their ability to write code while learning about form and images. 41 | 42 | It’s hard to pin down what Processing is, precisely. I admit, it can be confusing, but here it is: it’s both a programming environment and a programming language, but it’s also an approach to building a software tool that incorporates its community into the definition. It’s more accurate to call Processing a platform — a platform for experimentation, thinking, and learning. It’s a foundation and beginning more than a conclusion. 43 | 44 | Processing was (and still is) made for sketching and it was created as a space for collaboration. It was born at the MIT Media Lab, a place where C. P. Snow’s two cultures (the humanities and the sciences) could synthesize. Processing had the idea to expand this synthesis out of the Lab and into new communities with a focus on access, distribution, and community. Processing is what it is today because of the initial decisions that Ben and I made back in 2001 and the subsequent ways we’ve listened to the community and incorporated contributions and feedback since the beginning. Processing was inspired by the programming languages BASIC and Logo in general, and specifically by John Maeda’s Design By Numbers, C++ code created by the Visual Language Workshop and Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab, and PostScript. Processing wasn’t pulled from the air, it was deeply rooted in decades of prior work. 45 | 46 | 47 | ####PROCESS 48 | 49 | While Processing started out as the work of two people who volunteered their time, it quickly outgrew what was possible for Ben and I to manage. Increased expectations and ambitions for Processing emerged when other people started to use it. Early on, we needed to do two things. First, to figure out how to collaborate with other people and second, how to remove ourselves as bottlenecks to moving forward. 50 | 51 | For collaboration, we found amazing people through the internet who were excited to volunteer time to work with us on certain aspects of the project. However, we weren’t able to find help for some of the more technically difficult under-the-hood programming tasks. So from early on, we’ve needed to secure some funding for the project to hire out some pieces of the code in balance with working closely with volunteers. As some collaborators contributed more to the work, they organically moved closer to the center and into more specific roles within the project. Over time, Florian Jenett, Andreas Schlegel, Elie Zananiri, Andres Colubri, Dan Shiffman, and Scott Murray became essential. Dan became a third official project lead when we started the Processing Foundation in 2012. Many, many other volunteers made crucial contributions over the years — too many to list here, but it’s all archived at www.processing.org. 52 | 53 | In addition, Ben and I were spending our evenings and weekends working on the project and that has largely continued into the present, but we now require more balance. Like our collaborators, we now have even more challenging responsibilities outside of working on Processing. That brings us to the second point, the need to remove the core team as bottlenecks to the growth of the project. 54 | 55 | This is done through more shared responsibility and developing the software in a modular way. The goal for Processing has always been to have a minimal code base and interface. It’s a different type of software development than a program that is sold and marketed based on new features that are continuously added and removed to encourage or force upgrades. Processing has a core that changes slowly, while the structure of the code supports libraries to extend the software quickly into new areas. 56 | 57 | A Processing library is a standalone piece of code that integrates into the core to extend what is possible. With only a few exceptions, libraries are contributed by the community of people who use Processing. The generous developers who make and share libraries document their open code as well as host the files for download. More than anything, libraries have allowed Processing to expand into unexpected directions and they are a remarkable example of a community of individuals sharing responsibility for building and maintaining a free software infrastructure. 58 | 59 | As a free software project, Processing utilizes other free software projects. Processing was built by combining modular pieces of free software together and adding more code to create a new coherent whole. If the entire project was written from scratch, it would have required a team of engineers and more time. We had neither. 60 | 61 | It’s also important to say that we didn’t want to raise money to write Processing from scratch and we didn’t want to work on Processing full time or to manage a team of people to work on Processing full time. We made Processing to help us with our primary work. In Ben’s case, this was creating visualizations for the Human Genome Project and in my case, to teach designers the basics of computer programing and to explore code in my visual arts practice. We needed a tool to support the work we did — to develop ideas and forms in our own context. We had (and still have) no interest in working full time to make a tool. 62 | 63 | Our system of guidelines and relationships that enabled the software to be maintained and to improve broke down slowly and reached a critical point around the time of the Processing 2.0 release. The expectations of the community and the complexity of the software had grown to a point where volunteered “free time” of the core developers and occasional help could not complete the work without deep personal sacrifices. To attempt to keep the project moving, we started the Processing Foundation as a legal not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. We started to ask for donations from the community at the time the software is downloaded. The truth is that we need substantial funding to keep the software maintained and improving and the ideal of a 100% volunteer effort coordinated through the internet wasn’t working for our specific situation. We finally acknowledged that free software is expensive to make. 64 | 65 | Processing evolved through building on top of existing tools and collaborating with others to share the responsibility. That is still the case today, but the development is also supplemented through donations from the community, programs like Google’s Summer of Code, and occasional generosity from academic institutions (New York University, Miami University, University of Denver), companies (O’Reilly), and other open-source projects that use our code (Arduino). 66 | 67 | On the tenth anniversary of the Processing software in 2011, we made a list of what we felt was essential to the project: 68 | 69 | - Programming in an arts context 70 | - Simple but not simplified, scale complexity 71 | - Made for education and learning 72 | - Bridge to other languages and platforms 73 | - Provide infrastructure for learning and teaching 74 | - Develop through teaching 75 | - Simple publishing for sharing 76 | - Community infrastructure 77 | - Extensible through libraries 78 | - Import/export to diverse media and formats 79 | 80 | In 2015, I re-assessed this list and synthesized it to this core: 81 | 82 | - Access 83 | - Community 84 | - Free (Libre, Libero) 85 | 86 | I feel that with more detail (as I have started to flesh out above), these three points are the core of Processing and they differentiate its approach from proprietary, consumer-driven software. 87 | 88 | 89 | ####DOMAIN 90 | 91 | These core ideas outlined in this text emerged within the culture of free software. Free software is primarily created by technical folks for other technical folks — it has been most successful in the realm of systems administration and operating systems in projects like the Apache Web Server and GNU/Linux. The Free Software Foundation and its “copyleft” idea has been the pioneer and uncompromising proponent that “any user can study the source code, modify it, and share the program.” 92 | 93 | Artists have also pioneered new ideas about intellectual property. For instance, the first Radical Software publication in 1970 introduced an anti-copyright symbol, an “x” within a circle to mean “DO copy.” Dan Sandin introduced his Distribution Religion in the early 1970s so the schematics for his Image Processor could be “copied by individuals and not-for-profit institutions without charge.” 94 | 95 | Ideas about free access to information are less tested in areas of the arts that have more physical outcomes, that is architecture, sculpture, product design, fashion design, jewelry, ceramics, etc. There have been explorations for many years, but these tests have yet to fundamentally transform these areas. The software used within these fields can follow existing models, but what about the “hard” tools, the more material technologies? 96 | 97 | The technologies that may enable this transition are newer than those required for free software. They have developed rapidly within the last decade and to a large extent they are still nascent. New types of computer-controlled fabrication technologies and new cultures emerging around crowdfunding might be a strong foundation for new opportunities. 98 | 99 | Through initiatives like Processing, communities of creators are working to realize a new vision for software and fabrication within the arts with the goal of controlling of our own tools. In time, will this grow or diminish? Is this a trend or is it more substantial? The model of our communities paying a company for licenses to use standardized software that will “just work” is a model that might make sense in the category of functional productivity software, but has little relevance to artists and designers who thrive on radical exploration. I want to succeed in pursuing this new path; I want you to succeed; I think it’s important and it can be done. 100 | 101 | 102 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------