IMII_ART/Rouvelle/Spring '07
Friday 11am-5pm. (Lunch break from 12-1)
Brown Center 206
Contact:jrouvelle@mica.edu
Office: Brown Center, room 211, phone (in office).
Office hours: by appointment
_______________________
Course Description:
IMII:art will explore the
dynamics and aesthetic potentials of interactivity and collaboration. Students
will develop and play mobile multi-player urban strategy games, learn about
sensors and micro-controllers and build their own interactive projects that
will be linked together with other projects from other institutions around the
world to form a massive chain reaction that will occur at the end of the
semester, on May 5.
IMII:art will be the first electronically “glocalized” course at MICA, where
students will have the opportunity to communicate, collaborate and partner with
students from other schools in real time, via ivist and other systems, and,
finally, participate in a massive chain reaction in connection with several
other institutions at the end of the semester. Entitled “Chain Reaction ‘06”,
kinetic sculpture, media projections, dynamic architecture, sound, and any
media that has interactive sensibilities will be arranged so that when
activated, a domino effect will ensue. The catalytic agents could range from
the primordial to the digital. Water, fire, and air could be dispensed by
electromechanical devices and interleaved with data packets and algorithms to
induce a society of reactive agents. The governing principles or group behavior
will be decided through class collaboration and informed by research into such
topics: as swarm intelligence, missile guidance, alchemy, dominos, and
artificial life. The resulting chain reaction could resemble an exquisite
corpse, an anarchist’s ideal internet, ant colonies, the Mouse Trap game, or a
premeditated sequence of events that would amaze Rube Goldberg.
Prerequisite: EA 210, IMI.
Evaluation:
Grades in this course will be based on regular class attendance, the quality of
your work, class participation, and progress. Tardiness and excessive absences
will adversely affect your grade. Participation in discussions and critiques is
mandatory.
Projects & Grading:
Students will be graded by letter, A-F, on all evaluated work. Work must be
completed on time and in full satisfaction of each project goal. Late work
(assignments handed in or posted after the start of in-class critique sessions)
will be automatically downgraded by one letter grade.
A
Well above the expectations of the course. Outstanding participation,
attendance, and exceptional progress.
B Above average assignments and participation. No more than
one absence.
C Average execution of assignments, participation, and no more
than two absences.
D Well below average: work, attendance (two absences), projects,
and participation.
F Unsatisfactory: work, attendance (more than two absences),
projects, and participation
Attendance:
Two or more unexcused absences from class may result in failure. Two unexcused
late arrivals, or early departures (eg, not returning from dinner, or other
unexplained disappearance) will be marked as the equivalent of one absence.
Absence from a class is not an excuse for skipping a tutorial, reading
assignment, or posting an assignment. You are fully responsible for completing
work.
Readings:
Readings and tutorials will often be delivered through the web - via links
(URLs). Critiques will frequently be initiated from various topics covered in
the readings - in other words, please use the concepts you read about in
discussion of fellow students' work.
Supplies:
Please bring to each class: 1-2 CD-R(s) - Recordable Compact Discs (700 MB).
You'll probably go through many of them, for both this and other digital
classes. You might also want to bring in a sharpie to label your CD's.
It is essential that all work done in class be saved to CD-R at the conclusion
of class. There will be many, many other students using these computers and
anything saved on them will be permanently removed shortly after the conclusion
of class.
Software Consultant:
If you are having trouble becoming acquainted with the software we will be
using please see the software consultant.
Food and Drink in the Computer Labs:
No.
ADA COMPLIANCE:
In order to provide the highest quality educational experience for every
student, MICA is committed to compliance with the ADA and Section 504. Any
student who has (or suspects he or she may have) a physical, cognitive, or
psychological disability and who wants to request accommodations must
immediately schedule an appointment to meet with the Director of the Learning
Resource Center, Dr. Kathryn Smith, by calling the LRC Administrative
Assistant, Mary Walsh, at (410)669-3177. The LRC is MICA’s designated
department for determining reasonable accommodations based on legal requirements
and will provide the eligible student with an official Accommodation
Verification letter to the instructor. Each semester the student must formally
request accommodations from the LRC each semester, and format of the
Verification letters change each semester to ensure currency.
NOTE: Students with disabilities who want assistance during emergency
evacuations must register with the LRC within the first week of each semester.
HEALTH AND SAFETY:
MICA has developed policies and practices to ensure a healthful environment
and safe approaches to the use of equipment, materials, and processes. It is
the mutual responsibility of faculty and students to review health and
safety standards relevant to each class at the beginning of each semester.
Students should be aware of general fire, health, and safety regulations
posted in each area and course specific polices, practices, and cautions.
Students who have concerns related to health and safety should contact
Quentin Moseley, Environment Health and Safety Coordinator at 410 225 0220
or email at qmoseley@mica.edu
There is no Final Exam during exam week. Our final class is
the last week of classes, but our FINAL PROJECT WILL OCCUR ON SATURDAY MAY 5TH,
THIS IS MANDATORY
________
Texts/Primary
sources:
Dr. Edward Shanken has written
and edited significant articles on Telematic Art – we will be reading several
of his papers.
***************************************
Introduction to course and lab.
Please send an email with the account you want us to use to both me (jrouvelle@mica.edu, and sam: jss@problemboard). We will set up a group this week and invite you.
Sam Sheffield will be working with us. If you have technical and/or lab questions that come up during the week and you feel you would like to sit down with him to go over some things send him and email and make an appointment: jss@problemboard.com
Getting Started:
“But,
what does "interface" mean? And "cybernetics?" Basically,
the former represents any surface which separates two systems, while the
latter is a discipline that studies how the referred systems communicate and
interact with each other.
If interactivity
can be freely defined as a reciprocal relationship between two systems through
an interface, just like it happens in the interaction between humans and
machines or between machines and other machines, then the works selected
for the exhibition perfectly fit within the theory of cybernetics."
(...)
The works selected "embody concepts which are important to cybernetics,
such as feedback, communication, causality, information, observation,
predictability and equilibrium.
‘When
people say "interface", they usually mean VIRTUALITY.
By
"virtuality", I refer to the opposite of reality: the seeming of a
thing, anything. Most things have both a reality (nuts and bolts) and a
virtuality (conceptual structure and feel). A building and a car have a
physical reality and a virtuality-- a conceptual structure and feel. The
only thing that doesn't have a virtuality is something you're not supposed to
know about or feel-- like a fishhook (till it's too late).
We
don't usually design software interfaces, we design software virtuality.
The only time you design a software "interface" is when a program
already exists with very specific functions, and you are just deciding how that
function is to be shown to the user. But if you are designing or deciding
that function-- which is more usually the case-- then you are designing its
conceptual structure and feel, or its virtuality.’
-ted nelson
“Real
projects for ordinary people tend to overlap, interpenetrate, and constantly
change. The software requirement of their staying in one place with a
fixed name is inane. The problem is much harder.”
--ted
nelson
As stated above, the goal of this class is to create and
participate in a collaborative, multistage, interactive telematic event that
will occur on Saturday May 5, 2007. The project will consist of a
self-sustaining network of events in which each element induces and influences
other elements within the network.
Parameters:
While the ultimate form of the event will be determined by the class and the
consortium of collaborators, we are going to impose a few limits/parameters to
increase the probability of a successful outcome.
We will be working with the consortium to
create salient intersections.
There will be chain reactions with other
institutions such as California College of Art, the Parsons School of Design,
and others via the internet. As the day
of the show is Cinco de Mayo I am working to connect with an institution in
Mexico.
A note on Tech for the class:
The idea is to build a living network comprised of dynamic elements. Batteries are not required, a robust interaction that integrates well with the other projects is. The biggest challenge may be creating a structure that is truly interactive. Pick a technology that suits your intentions. Snail mail, payphones, street performance, cell phones, fm transmitters, flash, processing, max are all viable media.
Class Structure:
Honda Ad, influenced by Fischl and Weiss' film "The Way Things Go"
Japanese Rube Goldberg
machines
Last Year’s event
Are these reactive or interactive?
Starting Points for discussion:
Do we want to allow remote users to influence
or control aspects of the network?
Assignment:
_________________________________________________
Visit to the Cell Phone exhibit at the Contemporary
Museum
Some things to consider in regard to the show:
Sense of space/place. Events that form within a matrix of elements, comprised of shared components of the matrix. The forms dissolve and the elements go back into it – what does this action say about the nature of the matrix and our experience of it? How can these events become part of the critical dialogue – existing as they do outside the confines of the gallery’s white box?
Communication technologies shape these events.
Howard Rheingold, in 1994, described four characteristics of net-based communication:
Exerpt from: “Intelligente Ambiente (Intelligent environment), Ars Electronica 1994 editors, Karl Gerbel, Peter Weibel ; editing, Katharina Gs�llpointner. PVS Verleger (1994).
“The
power of virtual communities and computer networks derives from four unique
characteristics of computer-mediated communications:
First, it's a many-to-many medium;
Second, it allows people to connect with
each other in new ways;
Third, the power of the technology that supports
the communities will continue for the foreseeable future to be very powerfully
potentiated by the convergence of all media to digital forms.
Finally, cyberspace has the potential to
become a platform for innovation that can enable entrepreneurs to create new
uses for the new medium. New applications, new cultures, new businesses, new
markets, new wealth, new power, for larger and wider groups of people, can be
built on a technological platform that is sufficiently open to innovation.
Rheingold wrote: Second, it allows people to connect with each other in new ways;
In short, it takes a group interacting, listening, (“two monologues don’t make a dialogue”), and often the individual members of the group don’t know, by themselves, the direction of the group (flocking boids, the 51st deer [roper and Conrad – democracy among the animals).
the blind men and the elephant parable.
We need reports from others and need to create a composite understanding from those points – a web of associations. Bob Whitman’s phone work.
If we are going in circles, how might we break the cycle and in so doing develop more accurate models of our experience?
Let’s discuss I think,
therefore I am resistant to change
Strategies for dialogue.
Dialogue as persistent, collective, discovery.
Mental model = interpretive system.
BTW,
Judith Kleinfeld, in 2001, re: Stanley Milgram, and more (link, explanation): is the six-degrees of separation theory an urban myth? Or, is the net a simulation/digitization (a second life) of our ghettoized, segregated culture?
How could that happen, especially in an apparently NEW technology? What is the mental model at the root of these interactions, and what is its’ media?
Question: how might we use technology to alter and develop our mental models instead of simulate them?
Ken Knabb (ed), Situationist International Anthology Edited and translated from the French by Ken Knabb 1981 (2nd printing 1989; 3rd printing 1995). Web archive: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm.
Concept of the détournement
The French word détournement means deflection,
diversion, rerouting, distortion, misuse, misappropriation, hijacking, or
otherwise turning something aside from its normal course or purpose. It has
sometimes been translated as “diversion,” but this word is confusing because of
its more common meaning of idle entertainment. Like most other English-speaking
people who have actually practiced détournement,
I have chosen simply to anglicize the French word.
For more on détournement, see theses
204-209 of The Society
of the Spectacle.
How might détournement be put to use in our event? How do you relate détournement to the flocking behaviors described above?
How might a détournement be arranged at something like the den?
Some works to consider:
DoEat, institute
for the unstable media, thinkg.net, TED conference, Patricia Reed, Touchtone
Terrorists, come out and play festival,
eatingbrains
Class tag-cloud, interface to class tag-cloud
Mick’s final project
Assignment:
Read: telematic embrace, ed shanken.
____________________________________________________________
Week
3
Discussion
of Roy Ascott (Walker Arts telematic time line/Shanken)
text:
Excerpts:
Telematics refers to the conjunction of computers and telecommunications. The term was coined in 1978 by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in a report to French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and popularized in the report’s subsequent publication in English as The Computerization of Society. Comparing telematics with the technologies that fueled the industrial revolution Nora and Minc claimed that it “will have wider consequences:”
Above all, insofar as it is
responsible for an upheaval in the processing and storage of data, it will
alter the entire nervous system of social organization... This increasing
interconnection between computers and telecommunications - which we will term “telematics”
- opens radically new horizons.
Crucial to Ascott’s theory and practice of Telematic Art is the transformation of the viewer into an active participator who collaborates in creating the work, which is never a static product, but always remains in process throughout its duration.7
In his essay,“Is There Love in the Telematic
Embrace?” (1990), Ascott attempted to attribute to electronic art the
potential to embody love. Mindful of the schism between utopian and dystopian
perspectives on technology and the future with respect to art, Ascott
addressed a common concern amongst critics of electronic art: the fear that
technology would overwhelm and dehumanize the arts, a last bastion of humanist
values. If it could be shown that telematic art had the potential to embody
love, then it would not be a paradox for art to be electronic and
simultaneously serve humanist principles.
In constructing his argument, Ascott strategically opposed seemingly incompatible ontologies. His Fourieran description of love as passionate attraction implied a universal, transcendental principle in dynamic interplay with the apparent contingencies of love regarding history, gender, and culture, and between love manifested in physical presence as opposed to telepresence. While maintaining an ostensibly unconditional principle of love and promoting collaborative emergence, Ascott characterized his project in Derridean terms as “pure electronic différence” - one rife with “uncertainty” and “instability.”
Ascott was profoundly influenced by early writings on cybernetics, including F.H. George’s Automation, Cybernetics and Society (1959), Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1948), and W. Ross Ashby’s Design for a Brain (1952). Cybernetics introduced a method for thinking about the relationships amongst the various interrelated elements of a system, concentrating on the regulation of these elements in order to control the outcome of the system. Primary to the management of the system was the ability for each element to offer feedback about its own status to the other elements of the whole. In this way, the elements could communicate with each other and provide information that would enable the regulation of the system as a whole in order to maintain homeostasis.
Around 1960, Ascott began exploring cybernetics in the context of interactive art and art education. In 1964, he published “The Construction of Change,” a text on the relationship between art, systems theory, cybernetics, and behavior. In it, he wrote: To discuss what one is doing rather than the artwork which results, to attempt to unravel the loops of creative activity, is, in many ways, a behavioral problem...It leads to a consideration of our total relationship to a work of art, in which physical moves may lead to conceptual moves, in which Behaviour relates to Idea.9
Ascott’s emphasis on behavior included not only the production of objects, texts, and pedagogy, but led to a theorization of art as part of an integrated process in which thought and action were interconnected components of an inter-responsive system, fundamental to which is consciousness. According to Ascott, it was at the level of consciousness that the artist, artwork, and viewer exchange aesthetic information and alter their individual states, thereby transforming the consciousness and behavior of the (social) system as a whole. The artist applied such concepts in the systematic Groundcourse he designed and directed at the Ealing School of Art in London (1961-64), where he introduced processes and methods such as inverted logic, chance operations, and behavioral psychology into the curriculum. Moreover, the courses he instituted both at Ealing, and later at Ipswich Polytechnic, had at their core a cybernetic approach to collaborative work, whereby discrete groups of six students functioned together as an integrated, self-regulating system.
Ascott refined his theoretical articulation of the relationship of art to behavior and process in his 1967 manifesto Behaviourables and Futuribles. He wrote:
When art is a form of
behaviour, software predominates over hardware in the creative sphere. Process
replaces product in importance, just as system supersedes structure.11
This passage suggests that Ascott not only recognized
an artist’s behavior as a viable artistic medium, but that he expanded the
province of art to include idea, ritual, and system - important additional
constituents of consciousness.
To describe what has happened one has to cross out
that old word "observer" and put in its place
"participator." In some strange sense the universe is a participatory
universe.
While science has continued to offer Ascott robust
models for his expansive formulations of art as process, system and behavior,
it comprises just one system of knowledge from which he has constructed his
artistic cosmology. For example, Ascott also has integrated western
metaphysical philosophy in his work. Creative Evolution, written in 1907
by French philosopher Henri Bergson, is paramount among these sources.15 Bergson argued that as scientific reason enables the
accumulation of knowledge about physical matter, so metaphysical intuition
enables the knowledge of spirit. He theorized that the union of reason and
intuition (what he called durée, or duration) conjoins past, present, and
future, dissolving the diachronic appearance of categorical time, and providing
a unified experience (or conscious awareness) of the synchronic relatedness of
continuous change.
In 1966 Ascott developed a systematic plan for
the construction of a “cybernetic art matrix,” in which the computer was
conceived of as:
a tool for the mind, an
instrument for the magnification of thought, potentially an intelligence
amplifier... [T]he interaction of artefact and computer in the context of the
behavioural structure, is equally foreseeable... The computer may be linked to
an artwork and the artwork may in some sense be a computer.18
Anticipating the creation of the Internet by several years,
Ascott further proposed that telecommunications networks could enable:
[i]nstant person to person
contact [that] would support specialised creative work... An artist could be
brought right into the working studio of other artists ... however far apart in
the world...they may separately be located. By means of holography or a visual
telex, instant transmission of facsimiles of their artwork could be effected...
[D]istinguished minds in all fields of art and science could be contacted and
linked.19
Assignment:
·
Check out
Ulises Ali Mejias’ blog
·
Please read
the long statement on
his research interests, and pay close attention to his notion of “the irrelevancy
of the near”
·
Please read
“Silence is a
Commons” by Ivan Illich, and think about how it relates to Shanken’s
writings on Ascott and the promise of Telematic Art.
__________________________________________________________
Frank Dietrich: from “The computer: a tool for thought experiments”
Art as embodiment of mind:
Art is then a method of mirroring the thinking consciousness by externalizing its content. And by becoming an external object that presents itself to the mind, art becomes the manifestation and origin of other mental activities. Therefore, the creation of art and its perception can be understood as a dialectical act of becoming conscious of ourselves. We are raising our own consciousness about ourselves to a new level by reflecting it in the form of an external object and by reflecting in turn on this object itself.
Contemplation of the artwork as an essential aspect of the experience:
Contemplation of the artwork 'dematerializes' the thingly, sensory element of the work, assimilating its unities of reflection into thinking. As the viewer thus reflectively brings the reflexive and compositional unity of the artwork to its fulfilment, the artwork is allowed into the mind to open up or disclose multifarious strands of reflection in the process of the mind itself. Thus by being assimilated into the mind's reflexivity, the artwork evinces dimensions of pure thought that constitute its dialectical 'subjectivation'. The reflective subjectivation of the art object is equivalent to its 'spiritualization': that is, through its assimilation by thought, both reflections and feelings, previously viewed as being in the external work itself, are activated in thought, becoming one with it.
Relationship of material to the thought that is being
modeled:
Robert Smithson, a pioneering artist of earthworks discussed his intentions in an article that characterized his art projects as "sedimentation of the mind". His remark reminds us that even the most physical artworks of today are conceived of as mental representations. So there is no contradiction between conceptualists and earth artists, at least in this sense; both try to model mental events but choose extremely different material in which to craft their thoughts.
So, we have a moment of contemplation, and may choose to explore the resulting idea by creating a model within a given medium.
John Dewey:
The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematical signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that they merge directly into it.
We then contemplate the resulting thing, and, experiencing the model of our thought, “are activated in thought, becoming one with it.” And so on. The qualities of our development (the things, institutions, and various cultural forms we inhabit) follow the interactions between contemplation, modeling our thoughts, reflection, and unity.
How do so-called electronic, interactive media model experience? What are the qualities of contemplation, making things that model our thought, reflection, and unity, associated with their experience?
Ascott described the embrace of
Telematic Art as drawing participators into the hybrid field of cyberspace, an
environment where they meet, and which they collaboratively create and transform
in a process of negotiation and unification that embodies and generates love.
Let’s discuss the relationship between these three models:
Last week we spoke about genuine aspects of experience that are common across cultures but seem somehow left out, or at least at odds, with the digital age.
Is it possible that better models of thought might be defined as models that represent our experience more accurately than previous models? Might more accurately be defined as including more nuances?
How accurate a model of our experience is the web?
How does it feel?
To repeat from Dietrich:
…through its assimilation by thought, both reflections and feelings, previously viewed as being in the external work itself, are activated in thought, becoming one with it.
How might elements of electronic culture be integrated into events designed to more accurately model, or explore our experience?
For some, who agree with the contemplation, modeling, reflection, and unity structure, the web itself is currently experienced as a unity, and our response is essentially to contemplate it as a unity. This structure will lead to developmental stagnation as the lesson is one of minimized agency.
How does Ulises Mejias’ irrelevancy of the near relate to this?
To repeat Philip Rosedale’s question at a Longnow seminar:
“what will happen when we digitize everything?”
To repeat from the Shanken article:
“Ascott advocated this quality for its inclusiveness, and claimed that it promoted the dissolution of traditional epistemological models based on binary oppositions, in particular the subject-object model of Western art since the Renaissance.”
The web is a convincing, useful model of an aspect of our experience, but we need to continue to shepherd our development.
Artists/Projects:
Video
of last year’s show
Norm White
(telematic arm wrestling)
Secondlife (main whatis)
Introduction to SecondLife (video)
ichat feedback loop and Tag
Cloud environment 1 and 2
>>Construction/Tech
Sensors,
Electronics and Physical Computing
Data from the physical world can
come from a variety of sensors that detect bend, acceleration, incident light,
sound and pressure. Conversely, we can use computational logic to move and
otherwise physically change an environment.
For applications using sensors
and effectors, Tom Igoe and Dan O'Sullivan at ITP (Graduate program at NYU)
have written a good handbooks about physical
computing :
http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~tigoe/pcomp/index.shtml
http://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/%7Edano/physical/physical.html
.
Interactive Media has some
common tools and a few parts, including some sensors and basic stamps commonly
used for mapping between sensors or actuators and a Macintosh or PC serial
port. We have software extensions for Max to read serial data. I will begin to demonstrate how to do this
next class.
Allelectronics, Sparkfun, and Jameco Electronics are good sources
of electronics hardware.
A more sophisticated platform
for wireless sensor experiments is the TinyOS mote developed at UC
Berkeley. http://webs.cs.berkeley.edu/tos/
Realtime
Media Authoring Software
MAX is a realtime control programming
environment originally designed to coordinate MIDI-based instruments. It now
has become a standard authoring and control system for interactive aural and
visual environments, and as such is a convenient vehicle for experiments with
time-based media in physical environments. References include http://www.synthesisters.com/download/MaxGettingStarted.pdf
and http://www.synthesisters.com/download/MaxReference.pdf.
MSP is an extension of
MAX to perform digital signal processing on data at audio rates. NATO is an
extension of MAX that performs realtime video and some OpenGL 3D graphics
transformations. MAX, MSP and NATO
run under Macintosh OS.
Jitter is an
array-processing system that transforms video under MAX in realtime.
PD is a more limited public domain analogue
of MAX, written for UNIX and offhandedly for Windows. It's good as a training
system if you can't get access to Max, but
Other media authoring
environments such as Flash and Processing
are fine as long as the source can be read and executed by peers and
instructor.
In Class Demo:
how
to connect a Basic Stamp (or Arduino Board) to MAX/MSP/JITTER. What
follows are some preliminary scripts and patches that you can expand upon in
your own projects. I have also brought in some sensors that we can use as
inputs.
' {$STAMP BS2}
' {$PBASIC 2.5}
SerOutPin PIN 1 'serial OUT pin (TXD - at the other end: RXD)
N9600 CON 16468 'BS2 baudmode values: 16468/9600, 16416/19200, 16390/38400
'See SEROUT in the Basic Stamp manual for details.
myCount VAR Word 'counter
myCount
= 0
SEROUT SerOutPin,N9600,[DEC myCount,CR] 'send current value
GOTO
Main_Loop
Here
is some much more interesting code that connects the BS2 to MAX:
'
{$PBASIC 2.5}
'each time the stamp gets a particular input (the number 100)
'it replies with the next number as it counts up to 400 and
'back
down again.
'SerOutPin PIN 17 'serial OUT pin (TXD - at the other end: RXD)
SerInData VAR Byte 'number to match to incoming data
SerWait CON 1000 'ms to wait for input before timing out
N9600 CON 16468 'BS2 baudmode values: 16468/9600, 16416/19200, 16390/38400
'See SEROUT in the Basic Stamp manual for details.
myCount VAR Word 'counter
myCount = 0
upCount VAR Bit 'flag to count up or down
upCount = 1
waitCounter VAR Byte 'counter to print waiting message to debug window
waitCounter
= 0
'read serial in, loop if nothing is received by timeout
SERIN 16,N9600,SerWait,Main_Loop,[SerInData]
IF serInData = 100 THEN
GOSUB The_Count 'do counting subroutine
SEROUT 16,N9600,[myCount] 'send current value
ELSE
HIGH 14
'PAUSE 500
'DEBUG "Received: ",DEC SerInData,CR 'got something, but not 100
ENDIF
myCount = myCount+1
ELSEIF myCount > 0 AND upCount = 0 THEN 'counting down (400 to 0)
myCount = myCount - 1
ELSEIF myCount = 400 THEN
upCount = 0 'switch from up to down
myCount = 399
ELSEIF myCount = 0 THEN
upCount = 1 'switch from down to up
myCount = 1
ENDIF
'
{$PBASIC 2.5}
SerWait CON 50 'ms to wait for input before timing out
N9600 CON 16468 'BS2 baudmode values: 16468/9600, 16416/19200, 16390/38400
'See SEROUT in the Basic Stamp manual for details.
myCount VAR Word 'counter
myCount = 0
upCount VAR Bit 'flag to count up or down
upCount = 1
waitCounter VAR Byte 'counter to print waiting message to debug window
waitCounter
= 0
GOSUB The_Count 'do counting subroutine
SEROUT 16,N9600,[myCount]
PAUSE 25 'send current value
LOW 15
GOTO
Main_Loop
myCount = myCount+1
ELSEIF myCount > 0 AND upCount = 0 THEN 'counting down (400 to 0)
myCount = myCount - 1
ELSEIF myCount = 400 THEN
upCount = 0 'switch from up to down
myCount = 399
ELSEIF myCount = 0 THEN
upCount = 1 'switch from down to up
myCount = 1
ENDIF
Assignment:
Begin to develop an idea for an interactive, responsive action using any media.
Be prepared to present your idea to class (5 min.), using some supporting materials (images, sounds, demonstrations, etc.).
___________________________________________________________
Ritual of the class tag cloud.
To repeat:
John Dewey:
The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematical signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that they merge directly into it.
Your project ideas.
Something to consider:
C.S. Peirce (1839-1914):
“consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object o our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the objects” from How to Make Our Ideas Clear “…he had in mind that a meaningful conception must have some experiential “cash value”, capable of being specified as some sort of collection of possible empirical observations under specifiable conditions. Peirce insisted that the entire meaning of a meaningful conception consisted in the totality of such specifications of possible observations.” R. Burch, Charles Sanders Peirce, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2001 Editition). Questions: · What are empirical observations (based on experience and observation, rather than systematic logic)?
· What are specifiable conditions?
The social construction of reality (berger and luckman, 1966).
A social construction or social
construct is an institutionalized entity or artifact
in a social system "invented" or "constructed" by participants
in a particular culture
or society
that exists because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow
certain conventional rules, or behave as if such
agreement or rules existed.
Social constructs include such things as games, money, school grades, titles, nationality,
governments,
universities,
corporations
and other institutions.
Other social constructs include language, class, race, gender, religion, science, childhood, sexuality,
morality, memory and reality.
Social constructionism is a school of
thought that attempts, to varying degrees, to analyze seemingly natural and
given phenomena in terms of social constructs. Connotations of such analysis
may seem to include made-up, accidental, arbitrary, and unreal,
though this is rarely what social constructionists who use the term have in
mind, for, according to most social constructionists, social constructions are
very much real - they are a part of, or sometimes the entirety of, lived
reality. Indeed, they have an ontological status in society as substantial as the
ontological status of brute facts.
Social constructions must be seen in an
institutional context, as arising from the institutionalization of patterns of
interaction and meaning in society leading to a construction of social
institutions and institutionalized perspectives and understandings.
A Community of Interactive Inquirers?
Review/Discussion: · presence is defined, by Peirce, be a relationship between empiric observation (experience related to a specific environment), and
· specifiable conditions (context, the rules of the game, what counts, etc.)
· peirce writes about how the conception of something requires relating
all empiric observations, the more empiric observations, the greater the
detail. More empiric observations require more observers and a greater dialogue · in a laboratory, the specified conditions are less complex to manage.
· in the street, there are many more angles to measure - each angle being
the experience (empiric observation) of the group in proportion to decorum. social construction of reality and decorum (etiquette). the things we talk about in groups help define our shared space. the things we don't talk about in public also defines public space, but remain largely unexplored as our social forms seem to impede the discourse by literally disallowing certain aspects of experience to enter the discussion. the rules of decorum (in our case) are so well ingrained that they operate on the level of intuition (ontology), making it more challenging for us to "freely decide" to express certain things - we have a sense (intuition) not to. example: someone has a phobia about stairs, but is not comfortable
expressing that concern. the experience is real and occurs within shared space, so it is an aspect of that space, but remains unexpressed. our understanding of public space is then limited. empiric observations within specifiable conditions. the empiric observation is the experience of the fear of stairs, decorum defines the specified conditions and attempts to disallow certain empiric observations, hence producing a less thorough understanding of that public space. our communication platforms and computing power may be able to assist us in a more detailed exploration of the spaces we inhabit, and, by extension, our experience within those spaces, but our social practices may impede it. Questions: how can we actively manage our cultural development? how can a project like ours promote certain understandings? what are the stakes of our work? how do event based, integrated media (ensembles of actions/gestures) projects become critical and a force for development? how do they, sometimes, usurp their own potential for such criticality?
Artists/Projects:
Discuss
your ideas for projects.
Tech:
Assignment:
· Continue to refine your project idea:
· Using the blog, write up a synopsis and respond to feedback from the parsons crew.
· Think about how to implement your idea, include the necessary technology, and identify what you will need to learn to accomplish your goal, and where you will need assistance from sam and me.
_____________________________________________________________________
Last week we discussed Art as gesture, and how these gestures may reveal aspects of our environment, relationships that are authentic, but minimized by cultural forms. To extend this idea, consider these quotes by Dr. Luca Turin and Norbert Wiener:
On
Better Metaphors and Suchness:
Think about your ability to discuss your experiences. Which experiences can you discuss in the greatest detail and describe with the finest nuance? We may discuss the taste of wine, for example, or the motor of a car, with great subtlety while many other experiences are simply labeled “weird”, “odd”, etc. Consider which experiences are readily described in detail, and which experiences are not, and you may get a sense of your culture’s priorities. If one wishes to engage in acts designed to develop certain potentials within a culture, perhaps a strategy would be to explore ‘marginal’ experiences in such a way as to make them more available for detailed discussion.
Last Year’s Video, seriously.
Some works:
Last Year’s Video, seriously….
Norm White
(telematic arm wrestling)
Examples:
And you.
Trip to NYC
Assignment:
Continue to develop your projects, and connect with the Parson’s crew.
___________________________________________________________
Twitter is/as a Renku machine
>>ARDUINO<<
è MacOSX
§ Goal: in two weeks (by the end of the first class after break, no homework over break!) have the arduino read an analog and digital sensor and toggle an on/off connection on your circuit bent project (see using a transistor as a switch for explanation and circuit diagram, see roomba hack link page and look at the schematic, paying close attention to the 2n3904 circuit [scroll down]).
· Galvanic skin sensor!
· Servo Motor Control
Some key sites that you should visit:
è RoombaReview (deals on roombas)
è Makezine
è Hackaday
è Gizmodo
Friday • March 9 • 7PM: Circuit Bending Workshop with Beatrix*JAR
The Minneapolis-based sound-art duo, Beatrix*JAR, pays
a special visit to AVAM to reveal the secrets of circuit-bending: the art of
coaxing new and surprising sounds out of recycled battery-powered toys. Your
old "Speak & Spell" never sounded so good! In this hands-on
workshop, rework the innards of battery-powered sound-making toy(s) or small
keyboards and bend the sound with the force of your will and creativity and a
little solder. Followed by an improvised performance. Bring a battery-powered
sound-making toy(s). Bring a date. Check out www.beatrixjar.com. Call
410.244.1900 to sign up. $15 members; $25 non-members.
Tech Demos:
Connecting
to Max using the Example scripts for Arduino Serial Read/Write:
max v2;
#N vpatcher 267 134 702 498;
#P origin 0 -26;
#P window setfont
"Sans Serif" 9.;
#P flonum 95 164 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222
0 0 0;
#P toggle 31 57 15 0;
#P toggle 79 26 15 0;
#P newex 79 53 58 196617
metro 100;
#P button 79 84 15 0;
#P newex 62 104 27 196617 gate;
#P user
umenu 142 81 100 196647 1 64 97 1;
#X add 1200;
#X add 2400;
#X add 4800;
#X
add 9600;
#X add 19200;
#X add 38400;
#P message 142 102 44 196617 baud
\$1;
#P newex 95 136 44 196617 serial a;
#P fasten 7 0 3 0 36 88 67 88;
#P
connect 6 0 5 0;
#P connect 5 0 4 0;
#P connect 4 0 3 1;
#P fasten 3 0 0 0
67 128 100 128;
#P fasten 1 0 0 0 147 128 100 128;
#P connect 0 0 8 0;
#P
fasten 2 1 1 0 237 99 147 99;
#P pop;
max v2;
#N vpatcher 494 113 957 606;
#P origin 0 11;
#P window setfont "Sans
Serif" 9.;
#P window linecount 1;
#P comment 145 209 212 196617 < change
letter to different port if necessary;
#P comment 145 177 268 196617 < click
to print available serial ports to Max window;
#P user hslider 42 398 37 349
400 1 0 0;
#P comment 93 81 100 196617 < turn on metro;
#P comment 146 152
268 196617 < bang checks serial in buffer \, 104 triggers BS2 counter;
#P
message 63 177 31 196617 print;
#P window setfont "Sans Serif" 36.;
#P
number 42 328 89 36 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P window
setfont "Sans Serif" 9.;
#P newex 42 152 86 196617 trigger 104 bang;
#P
number 159 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P newex 42
299 99 196617 sprintf %c%c%c%c;
#P number 119 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221
221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P number 79 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222
222 222 0 0 0;
#P number 42 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0
0 0;
#P newex 42 239 53 196617 cycle 4 1;
#P newex 42 117 64 196617 metro
1000;
#P toggle 42 69 39 0;
#P newex 42 209 71 196617 serial a 9600;
#P
connect 1 0 2 0;
#P connect 2 0 9 0;
#P connect 9 0 0 0;
#P connect 9 1 0
0;
#P connect 11 0 0 0;
#P connect 0 0 3 0;
#P connect 3 0 4 0;
#P connect 4
0 7 0;
#P connect 7 0 10 0;
#P connect 10 0 14 0;
#P connect 5 0 7 1;
#P
connect 3 1 5 0;
#P connect 6 0 7 2;
#P connect 3 2 6 0;
#P connect 8 0 7
3;
#P connect 3 3 8 0;
#P pop;
*****************************************************
Another Version of the above:
max v2;
#N vpatcher 494 113 957 606;
#P origin 0 11;
#P window setfont "Sans
Serif" 9.;
#P message 76 158 26 196617 104;
#P message 46 159 26 196617
105;
#P comment 145 209 212 196617 < change letter to different port if
necessary;
#P comment 145 177 268 196617 < click to print available serial
ports to Max window;
#P user hslider 42 398 37 349 400 1 0 0;
#P comment 93
81 100 196617 < turn on metro;
#P message 63 177 31 196617 print;
#P window
setfont "Sans Serif" 36.;
#P number 42 328 89 36 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221
222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P window setfont "Sans Serif" 9.;
#P number 159 264 35 9
0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P newex 42 299 99 196617
sprintf %c%c%c%c;
#P number 119 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222
222 0 0 0;
#P number 79 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0
0;
#P number 42 264 35 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P
newex 42 239 53 196617 cycle 4 1;
#P newex 42 117 64 196617 metro 1000;
#P
toggle 42 69 39 0;
#P newex 42 209 71 196617 serial a 9600;
#P connect 1 0 2
0;
#P connect 16 0 0 0;
#P connect 15 0 0 0;
#P connect 10 0 0 0;
#P connect
0 0 3 0;
#P connect 3 0 4 0;
#P connect 4 0 7 0;
#P connect 7 0 9 0;
#P
connect 9 0 12 0;
#P connect 5 0 7 1;
#P connect 3 1 5 0;
#P connect 6 0 7
2;
#P connect 3 2 6 0;
#P connect 8 0 7 3;
#P connect 3 3 8 0;
#P pop;
*************************************
Trip
to NYC on Saturday, March 31st?
Assignment: Have a good break. Or else.
______________________________________________________________
Discuss project ideas>>
Project Development/six weeks to performance…
1. I’m going to ask each of you to discuss your project ideas.
2. I’m going to pair some of you up to explore ways that your project ideas can influence each other.
3. At the end of class I’m going to ask the pairs to describe how their projects can connect with each other.
4. We’re then going to post our ideas to the blog.
Control/or lack thereof; a
story.
Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
Scientific study of
consciousness-related physical phenomena
Jack Houck – PK Parties
1.
A
work as a gesture (or intervention) and inclusive process.
2.
A
willingness to expand the scope (definition/parameters) of a work to
integrate as many empiric (observable) aspects associated with the gesture as
are available.
How? :
1.
Conceive
your concept and/or make a gesture.
2.
Carefully
observe and participate with the interactions that occur.
3.
Integrate
your observations and interactions into the form of the work.
4.
Now
is a good time to start.
Example:
1.
Class
Tag Cloud (input/display)
2.
Twitter
3.
Dialogue
>>Secondlife<<
A Recent ARG:
·
YZ
ARG
Tech Demo
ARDUINO/MAX (!!is now upgraded so the JVM is working!!) –
WORKING SCRIPT REPOSITORY, PLEASE USE!!!
Assignment: we
will spend the rest of our time building our pieces, please bring your
materials to class, post your ideas to the blog and actively work to integrate
your ideas with others both here and in nyc.
____________________________________________________________________