Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Art?
gz writes "The Whitney has put online an exhibit where viewers are encouraged to examine the source code of the program that generates the art, despite the fact that the majority of viewers have no idea what the code means. Projects use Java, C, Perl, Lingo, and VB."
...but this is not what I meant...
I've seen some 'artistic' perl programs that the code, itself, looks like a camel, and, when run, turns into two camels (in code) that, when run, returns to the original camel.
Wasn't there a software monopoly who encouraged (after a judge told them to do so) some selected state officers to examine the source code of its operating system, despite the fact that the majority of viewers had no idea what the code means ?
"The Whitney has put online an exhibit where viewers are encouraged to examine the source code of the program that generates the art, despite the fact that the majority of viewers have no idea what the code means. Projects use Java, C, Perl, Lingo, and VB."
Note that in the above quote, "the program" should be replaced with "the artists using the program" and the headline "open source art" should be replaced with "open source software tools for creating art".
The writer seems to be implying that the program is generating digital modern art without any human intervention whatsoever, which is both silly and wrong.
... how a buffer overflow would 'look'
Time to review that code!
I know my g/f's name is whitney, but that's about it. the rest of this just confuses me...
Visual Basic and the Art of Coding.
Can you blame them for trying to code the art?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I was wondering why no Random Art.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
It was incredible fun, and quite interesting to see how the graffiti layered up (all stages were saved progressively).
If at all interested, I've got some lingering info about Curator on my personal page (Curator is about the 3rd project down)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
CODeDOC takes a reverse look at 'software art' projects by focusing on and comparing the 'back end' of the code that drives the artwork's 'front end'--the result of the code, be it visuals or a more abstract communication process. A dozen artists coded a specific assignment in a language of their choice and were asked to exchange the code with each other for comments. The assignment was to 'connect and move three points in space,' which obviously could be interpreted in a literal or abstract way. The 'core' of the code (commonly referred to as the 'main') was not to exceed 8KB, which equals a fairly short text document. The results of the programming are made visible only after the code--what visitors to this site encounter first is a text document of code from which they can launch the front end of the project. The languages in which the code is written are Java, C, Visual Basic, Lingo and Perl. Obviously, this is only a selection of scripting and programming languages. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the scripting language on which the World Wide Web is based, and Flash Script were excluded mostly for pragmatic reasons (the inclusion of these languages probably would have doubled the number of artists, making the project unwieldy). Not all of the artists originally invited were able to participate in CODeDOC due to their busy schedules.
The category of software art, commonly used for artist-written software, is a manifestation of fairly blurry terminology. Software is generally defined as formal instructions that can be executed by a computer. However, there is no digital art that doesn't have a layer of code and algorithms, a procedure of formal instructions that accomplish a 'result' in a finite number of steps. Even if the physical and visual manifestations of digital art distract from the layer of data and code, any 'digital image' has ultimately been produced by instructions and the software that was used to create or manipulate it. It is precisely this layer of 'code' and instructions that constitutes a conceptual level which connects to previous artistic work such as Dada's experiments with formal variations and the conceptual pieces by Duchamp, Cage and Sol LeWitt that are based on the execution of instructions.
What distinguishes software art from other artistic practices, is that, unlike any form of visual art, it requires the artist to write a purely verbal description of their work. In traditional art forms, the 'signature' and 'voice' of an artist manifests itself in aesthetics of visuals and execution. Every medium may have its specific language but in digital art, this language has a quite literal rather than figurative manifestation. In software art, the visual results of the artwork are derived from the language of code. Languages are defined by grammar and complex rules and at the same time leave space for individual forms of creative expression. Our identity and the roles we play are expressed in our use of language. One might assume that the aesthetics of artists who write their own source code manifest themselves both in the code itself and its visual results. Artist John F. Simon, Jr. (who wasn't able to participate in the project) has talked about code as a form of creative writing. Code has also been referred to as the medium, the 'paint and canvas,' of the digital artist but it transcends this metaphor in that it even allows artists to write their own tools--to stay with the metaphor, the medium in this case also enables the artist to create the paintbrush and palette.
The projects featured as part of CODeDOC are expressions of distinct artistic signatures: the conceptual approach to the project, the way the code has been written, and the results produced by it reveal a lot about the respective artist. Some of the artists interpret the assignment in a predominantly graphic, visual way; others connect points in the global network of the Internet; one project explicitly treats the language of code as a narrative connecting 3 'characters'; another one creates a meta-layer for profiling the code itself, collapsing the boundaries between front end and back end; yet another project focuses on 'language abuse' and illegal instructions.
Intrinsic to software art is a procedural element that allows for reconfiguration and extension, and, as way of commenting on the projects, artists started to 'remix' their work, applying their own code to other projects or combining sections of code into a new project.
One does not need to be a programmer and have an in-depth understanding of computer languages to establish a connection between the code and its respective results: even a glance at the artists' source code will reveal certain mathematical functions, and in many cases, the artists' comments on their writing clarify the functionality of a line or section of the code. In some cases, reading the source code will enhance the perception of the work; in other cases, the code doesn't necessarily add to the projects. CODeDOC is an endeavor to take a closer look at the process of this particular artistic practice, and to raise questions about the parameters of artistic creation.
CODeDOC
Digital Art is not a purely visual medium but always consist of a mostly invisible back end--source code or scripting languages--and a front end, the results created by "computer language." These results can manifest themselves in visuals or a more abstract process that allows for a form of communication in the broadest sense. Source code is a set of instructions formulated in a language that can be understood by the computer.
In traditional art forms, the 'signature' and 'voice' of an artist manifests itself in aesthetics of visuals and execution. Every medium may have its specific language but in digital art, this language has a quite literal rather than figurative manifestation. The visual results of an artwork are derived from the language of code. Languages are defined by grammar and complex rules and at the same time leave space for individual forms of creative expression. Our identity and the roles we play are expressed in our use of language. One might assume that the aesthetics of artists who write their own source code manifest themselves both in the code itself and its visual results. How much of a personal signature is found in an artist's source code?
"CODeDOC" takes a 'reverse' look at artists' projects by focusing on and comparing the back end of the code. A dozen artists are invited to code a specific assignment in a language of their choice and to exchange the code with each other for comments. The emphasis is placed on process and data while the results are made visible only after the code. The project explores both the artist's creative expression on the level of source code and the linguistic universe of code.
Languages: Java, C/++, VB; Perl, Lingo, xml
[html and FlashScript have been excluded for pragamatic reasons]
Assignment and Requirements:
The code should move and connect three points in space. [This could obviously interpreted in a visual or more abstract way].
The code should not exceed 8 KB. 8 KB refers to your "main." The emphasis and focus is on code written by the artist. Obviously it's almost impossible to *not* call any libraries and subroutines but if possible, you should avoid relying on them too much (if they haven't been written by yourself); meaning, the idea is not that you write one line that calls powerful subroutines and libraries. However, if you can't resist bending the rules, please write a short line explaining what you did (so it becomes a bit more intelligible for anyone who isn't a programmer).
The code must be compilable / interpretable; it should run in a browser window or be accessible as downloadable executable.
The "object" is the code itself not what it produces. "Visual beauty" does not have to be the main focus.
By the deadline, you should deliver your code as a text file + the applet / exe etc.
The "assignment" will be collected and made available to everyone on a website. You are invited to comment on each others' projects. You do *not* have to comment on every participant's code; you can decide to stick to the artists' code that has been written in the language of your choice (or comment on whatever interests you).
The 'exhibition' of the project at the artport website will present each artist's code as well as the comments submitted by the other artists. The visuals / process created by the respective code can be launched from each artist's section.
(Tentative) Objectives:
Obviously, this is a more experimental and process-oriented project, and it can't be predicted what exactly the outcome will be. You shouldn't just strive to illustrate the potential outcome I'm outlining below.
The project could (but does not have to) show
*the differences between the respective coding / scripting languages
*the differences and/or similarities between artists' approaches -- be it in how they interpret the assignment or write their code
*the various relationships between code and its results
Some art's worth is derived soley from the process taken to make said art.
This is a very intersting way of playing with that notion.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yep. Once it was posted on Slashdot it was inevitable that it would be an example of the artistic technique known as praecisio. Complete silence.
I wrote something to generate pictures based on iterative choices from mutations of a blank image. Thing is, I had my head up my ass when it came to java at the time, and have not gone back to fix it at all. Y'all can feel free to check out the source and improve the hell out of it...
@AlexSheive
2. I've been wondering for a while how an open-source license for artworks/art assets would go. Something like,
I'm releasing this work in an editable format. You're free to modify and distribute it as long as:
I'm always credited in documentation as the original creator of the work. If there are multiple generations of creators, all should be clearly credited.
If you distribute the work, modified or unmodified, you must also distribute an editable version of the work including your modifications.
...is that it? My understanding of the GPL is limited, and I'm probably missing something...
This reminds me of a little /. feature I wrote on the subject of 'Open Source as an Art Form', er, 'Ant Farm'.
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
May I please have the source code for those applications as well? Thanks in advance.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
I knew it, Slashdot does not understand anything about art ;)) Anyway, it is this one by Alex Galloway.
Whoops, should be there now...
@AlexSheive
A painting is art, a paintbrush is not.
Similarly, the onscreen display could be considered art, while the code that generated it may not.
Noone has won anything.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
(*Note thatI said intended; I don't know anyone personally who uses it, but the examples I've seen are pretty interesting.)
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Well in that case I guess there is a human "Spirit" laying down the paint and creating the emotional imagry, whereas the souless "computer" was creating the imagry without there being any emotion behind it.
But of course a human did program the art software, producing imagery within a set of constraints, so the soul has been programmed in. It's probably infinately more "art" than anything painted by an elephant.
Besides all one has to do to see soulless and emotionless painting is to look at any Thomas Kincade work.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
>>A painting is art, a paintbrush is not.
Bad analogy, I think. What about a 20' high paint bursh? What about one so small that it only has 10 hairs in it? Both of these are examples of art. Someone would need to put a lot of creativity and time into each.
Art is everwhere and a blanket statement like yours will never be accurate.
My favorite app (not in the exibition) which generates art is Webcollage. It's a perl script which collects images at random from the web and pastes them together. It's my xscreensaver default and I am always amazed by how FEW pr0n images it shows (last one, a couple of months ago).
quake74
Yes, but Code is NOT a paintbrush. Code is also NOT art!
C, C++ JAVA, those are the paint brushes. The output of the code is the art.
But what is the code?
It is a tiny manefestation of the artists soul. Between the paint brush and the finished art is a human. The code IS the human in a microscopic captured for. The code is written by a human and the human has imbued the code with a subset of his soul like the human would imbue the brush as he is painting. It's like an artist "Magicly" teaching the brush what to paint, then days later having the brush paint the actual canvas (if that was possible).
The code is something new. It is neither the brush, nor the art. But a tiny displased human soul, ready to render out that tiny portion of the artists whims and desires on demand.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
But of course a human did program the art software, producing imagery within a set of constraints, so the soul has been programmed in. It's probably infinately more "art" than anything painted by an elephant.
Absolutely. I consider most the code I write to be of a certain degree of art. However, writing code that creates art is doubly soulfull in my opinion. Not only are you creating something you believe is art, but your creation is as well.
Besides all one has to do to see soulless and emotionless painting is to look at any Thomas Kincade work.
+1, Funny because it's true.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
So one of the major points of this exhibit is to "peek under the hood" of computer art and have people look at the code, in the same way that you might look at an artists brushes, paints, etc. Given that, you would think that they could format the source code properly. Look at this C source for the Linescape piece. It looks like someone hastily ran code2html without any concern for getting the tabs/whitespace correct, and called it a day.
Come on, if the point is to view source code the way it is "in the wild" then at least get the formatting correct. I don't know of any programmer that would purposefully write code that looks like that. The comments and other multiline structures don't line up, and there seem to be many spurious line breaks. (And the tab stops should be 2 columns, The Way God Intended, but that's just my opinion.)
If I were an artist who had created a commissioned piece of code and they posted it like that, I would feel a bit insulted. It's as if the gallery had let some photographic prints get waterlogged or a feature broke off of a sculpture during shipping, and they just continue to show the piece as if that's how it was supposed to look.
(And, if indeed that is how the author Camille Utterback truly formatted the source, then I shudder. For an exhibit about the "art of code", that's some damn butt-ugly code there. I'm only referring to the formatting, not its content.)
where viewers are encouraged to examine...despite the fact that the majority of viewers have no idea what the code means.
Once again art critics are commenting on something that they have no business commenting on. Thus the definition of art broadens just a bit more and loses more meaning. Right now it seems that humanities study equates to being able to make up more BS with a straight face than anyone else.
It's like those conversations you have on some CS topic where Joe Average says something and you have to reply "Um... that isn't how it works at all."
Of course in the arts it doesn't matter what is being said but what sort of crack-headed theory you can come up with about it and how loud your posse of "experts" can beat their chests. Of course in science we have terms for that too: Lysenkoism or Pathological science
What is music when you despise all sound?
The 256 byte demo called "Tube" (Windows) from 256b -- a site for 256 byte intros.
:) It's generated on the fly as well, which makes it actually fit the "generated art" topic IMHO.
;)
Among the most jaw dropping experiences *I* have had at least. What it is? Oh, just a rotating 3D tunnel effect in 256 bytes without Direct3D, OpenGL or similar graphics engines.
Assembler source for compilation in NASM included.
As some one said: "porn for coders".
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I agree, and even before my qbasic days, there was Logo.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
C, C++, JAVA, and I add to that list, English.
Replacing my addition with this argument and substitute book for code. A book is certainly art, but it doesn't produce an 'output'. Code can be printed into a book.
For somone that's illiterate, a book may not be art, but a painting could be.
The appreciation of code is different than appreciation of a book just as the appreciation of a book is different than the appreciation of a painting. For someone who has an appreciation for the code, code is art.
...I come from an art school background (now coding db-backed applications for websites, came to the field via graphic design like everyone else graduating from art school in the late 90s...), and have _long_ considered that code reflects much more about a program than the utilitarian aspects of a) "what does this program do?" and b) "how well is it engineered?".
My first "real" (snort!) job coming out of school was working with a team of other grads on the schools' website - within a week we were all able to recognize each other's code/quirks. And this was just plain vanilla HTML (among the least expressive of languages)!
the more interesting aspect is that of "code as art", in which the particulars of implementation (esp. the person doing the implementation) can invoke an aesthetic response, above and beyond the utility of that implementation. (or, in other terms, "much of what makes art interesting is that which is both pleasing and useless").
Anyway, I'm just happy to see that coding is beginning to be recognized as an expressive medium - whether it will ever be considered as such indpendently of the final product, I rather doubt (even printmaker's original plates/stones/etc. are rarely considered outside the context of an actual print run, and that medium is old old old...)...
tangent: this is perhaps one aspect in which open source coding (may not) necessarily result in the most "aesthetically pleasing" code; while the actual architecture of the program may be elegant and pleasing, the idiosyncrasies of any particular coder will be overwhelmed by multiple contributions to a project, (outside of the project leads who may be able to enshrining their own quirks as style/pattern requirements). However, I tend to find most "art by committee" to be lacking a very strong vision, and instead ends up becoming a whole ends up as simply the sum of its parts.
I may be wrong, just throwing the idea out there!
Usually other news sites have the same thing, and don't require registration.
May we never see th
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
return 1;
}
how could somthing that IS NOT considered free speech be considered ART ? While I disagree, that seems to be the prevalent legal attitude...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Sure, a paintbrush can be art.
But it would be really interesting only to people who understand why it's art and not just a paintbrush.
Like movies about people making movies. Or the Animaniacs. The rest of us are curious, maybe amused and entertained, but only Spielberg and Scorsese really get it.
--Blair
My first "art" release (knocked up after I finished my work on X-COM Apocalypse) was THROB, which was a purely visual experience, and did not include the source as part of the "experience".
My second "art" release, described on an Italian Linux site as "deliciously incompressible"
was created for the International Obfuscated C Code Contest 2000 in collaboration with a friend, and did get some recognition. It is "THADGAVIN, and it won the "Most Portable Output" award. It was also featured on a the French alternative art scene website Téléférique, and discussed on K5 in that context.
As for the stuff on display here, I find it uninspired artistically, and unimpressive technically. There is very little "art" to the source code, and very little original about the output. I suspect that they got to be shown in a reputable gallery purely on the basis that they are "in". Trendy art students, part of the art scene.
Thad