IM_III/Rouvelle/Fall '08

Thursday 9am-3pm. (lunch break from 11:30-12:30)

Brown Center 206

Contact:jrouvelle@mica.edu

Office: Brown Center, room 211, phone (in office).

Office hours: by appointment

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Course Description

Interactive Media III is studio course that offers an overview of the tools, aesthetics, and cultural paradigms at the intersection of computing, art, design, interaction and communication. Students will be introduced to an array of multimedia tools and techniques used in the production and authoring of graphics, text, animation, video, and sound. The goal of the course is to develop a familiarity with the materials of this evolving medium, along with practical and critical skills essential to the creation and interpretation of digital and electronic art forms.

Students are not expected to become experts in any software application. This course is not a "software training" course. Students are expected to learn the basics of the technology, make progress in their understanding of the tools I will introduce, and to make the best artwork they can. It is the intention of the course to explore the computer as a tool for making art, with the various software applications, readings, and presentations offering a context.

I ask that you approach our work with a sense of experimentation, and a willingness to explore its possibilities for you. In other words, to approach our work as artists: to reveal combinations, forms, perspectives, and patterns that, while speaking to personal sensibilities, engage others on the grounds of invention, discovery, beauty, and sincerity.

At the conclusion of our time together we will organize an exhibition in and around the Rosenberg Gallery of our work together.

This class, although carefully planned, will be a work in progress as I come to know you, and you me. I am very excited to be here and look forward to becoming familiar with your work and interests. Please feel free to contact me for any reason regarding our class. Communication goes a long way to ensure a good environment and successful experience.

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Course work in summary

Main Project

A significant element in your final grade will be your final project, which will be presented to the class for critique and be installed in the final exhibition in the Rosenberg Gallery. You are free to make your work out of whatever media you like. It is essential that the work have a clear interactive feature. We will discuss this thoroughly during class. You will also have to make it available to visitors to the show. We will discuss this as the semester progresses. It is also essential that you document your work - this is a skill that will benefit all of your future undertakings. Stategies and techniques of documentation will be a significant part of our coursework. You will have ample time to work on your project during the final third of the semester. During this time I will make a point of meeting with each of you individually. During our ninth class I will ask each of you to submit a brief proposal for your final project. The point is this is for me to work out technical needs, and to get an idea of what you are thinking about.

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 lunch, 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.

Who: Bill Berry

Where: Bunting 222

When: Monday: 3-5, Tuesday; 10:30-12:30, Saturday; 1-3

Food and Drink in the Computer Labs:

No.

ADA Compliance Statement

Any student who feels s/he may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact [insert instructor’s name/title] privately to discuss specific needs. Please contact the Learning Resource Center at 410-225-2416, in Bunting 458, to establish eligibility and coordinate reasonable accommodations. For additional information please refer to: http://www.mica.edu/learningresourcecenter/.

Health and Safety Compliance

From the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS):

The Office works to provide EHS support for all members of the MICA community. The primary goal of the Office is to be proactive in establishing a culture of safety in which each member of the community shares ownership responsibility that allows each person to be involved in maintaining a healthy work and studying environment. EHS uses several methods to achieve this objective.

First, the EHS office looks at the totality of the EHS requirements by combining campus needs with state and federal requirements and clearly communicating the shared policies and procedures. Second, EHS identifies training needs and develops guidelines for the use of equipment, material and procedures. Third, we ensure compliance with policies through evaluations, inspections, and committees.

It is the responsibility of faculty and students to understand health and safety policies relevant to their individual activities and to review MICA's Emergency Action Plan, as well as to participate in training, drills, etc. It is also each faculty member's responsibility to coordinate with the EHS Office to ensure that all risks associated with their class activities are identified and to assure that their respective classroom procedures mirror the EHS and Academic Department guidelines. Each of the Academic Department's also publish EHS procedures and policies such as a dress code, the use of personal protective equipment, fire safety, training, and how to properly dispose of chemical waste. Each of these policies and procedures must be followed by all students and faculty. Most importantly, it is the responsibility of the faculty to review, test, and assess each student's awareness of basic safety procedures, such as evacuation routes, use of chemicals, fire prevention, and all other guidelines posted by the Environmental Health and Safety Office, (e.g., smoking policy, independent studio policies, pet policy, disposing of hazardous and chemical waste, etc).

To become a member of the Faculty EHS Committee or for any questions relating to EHS, please contact Denelle Bowser, EHS Manager, at dbowser@mica.edu or by calling 410.462.7593. You can also visit the department online at www.mica.edu/ehs

This course is about making things interactive

Weekly Schedule

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Week 1

Field trip to the Hirshhorn to see The Cinematic Effect: Realisms

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Week 2

This is a studio class and its focus is the creation and documentation of works by you.

Class Structure:

• Every few weeks we will have a class crit, where eacb of you will present a new work.
• The Thursday preceding a class crit will be a studio day.
• Please bring what you are working on to class on studio days.
• I will meet with each of you to discuss what you are working on during studio day classes.
• On crit days we will have food and talk about your projects.
• Please create projects that are worthy of food and talking!
• Given the fact that you have limited time to create projects you will have to make decisions about what media you use.

• On class days following a crit I will give you some readings and a presentation on a sepecific topic.We will crit works based on how, specifically, they address the readings and other stuff we’ve talked about in class.
• The crits and our discussion will provide me with knowledge about how and what you are learning in class.

Dog Day Afternoon pt. 2

Dog Day Afternoon pt. 3

Pierre Huyghe’s The Third Memory

Screenwriter of DDA meets John Wojtowicz

Filmmaker Walter Stokman speaks with John Wojtowicz on the phone

Pierre Huyghe talks about The Third Memory.

Questions:

How do these different perspectives affect our understanding of John Wotowicz?

Do they enrich our understanding by adding interconnected layers of nuance?

How does a sequence of related sites (the three projects can be considered sites) add nuance to our understanding?

How does context (or, if you prefer domain) affect the experience of a work?

Sensory Deprivation Effect.

The Art (and science) of Audience Manipulation

Some researchers have recently decided that magic and conjuring shed an interesting light on the workings of the human mind. A conference is being organized by cognitive scientists that will include magicians and professional conjurors.

Derren Brown, of British TV and fx’s Trick of the Mind has recreated several of the tricks mentioned in the article. You can find many of his shows on www.joox.net.

The different sites are related but not identical, and experienced together deepen one’s understanding.

Pierre Huyghe’s A journey that wasn’t

Nicolas Bourriaud on Huyghe

Pierre Huyghe interview with Mark Gotftried at the Tate modern

Art by telephone, ‘69

Questions:

How does A Journey That Wasn’t relate to The Third Memory in its’ treatment of media?

If I ask you whether or not you saw a film, Cloverfield for example, and you said yes and we began talking about it do you think the location and format of the film (did you see it in a theater, on an ipod, on your laptop, alone, with friends, with strangers, etc.) would affect your understanding of it?

What I’d like you to think about is how to create sites of integration, where different formats, methods, and media work together to broaden the content of your project, to provide a multi-dimensional, interactive experience that reveals a world of greater nuance to each participant.

HOWTO:

• As mentioned above you’ll each be creating four projects during the course of the semester.

• The first project will be presented in two weeks.

• For the first project, create something in whatever media and format you’d like, and address some of the things we’ve been discussing.

• If you can figure out how to incorporate more than one media, format, etc., great, if you can’t, that’s ok, we’ll discuss it during your crit.

Elements to consider mixing:

• Realtime Audio: skype

• Streaming Video: Ustream, Mogulus, stickam, etc.

• Website:

• Ajax:

• ???

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Week 3

Participatory Media:

The UnConvention

GET TO A SWING STATE

• Canvassing is the Number 1 way to get people to vote.
• Crucial swing States .
• The Obama campaign, as an example, makes it pretty easy.
• You sign up for one of their groups (like Missouri for Obama or Teachers for Obama on their website).
• You can also search for the nearest field office on their website near you and contact them.
• Here is an example of an email to see if you want to do a Pennsylvania cross border run.

Register to Vote!

• Make sure your are registered.
• If you are from a swing state, you can vote at your parents' address.
• Here's a good place to start:.

Every school has a student coordinator and you can contact them.

OT: curious about what’s going on with our economics?

OT: Jung – Myeres-Briggs Personality Test

When we say “I am a bookkeeper we are ascribing the richness of our persona to a task, we are self-identifying as a discrete activity, that seems tragic. While one may work as a bookkeeper, doctor, etc., there are doubtless other facets to one’s self that go well beyond one task.”

Youtube’s Annotation Feature:

Interactive fortune teller

Choose your own Adventure

Interactive Dating

RSS

The Semantic Web

The Shortest Path to the Future Web

From Here to There

The Web As Database

“the web is a graph, feeds & (XML/HTML) docs are tree structures which can be mapped onto a graph.”

Yahoo! Pipes - the first GUI builder for the biggest database in the world, the Web itself.

ReadWriteWeb: the Ultimate Yahoo! Pipes Creations List

Tony Hirst has a bunch of interesting pipes.

Work on your projects, I will meet with each of you during class to discuss your work.

Next week is our first crit!

Please:

• Arrive to class prepared to show and talk about your work.
• Each of you will show your work from the teacher’s station.
• If you want to project from your laptop please be sure to bring the appropriate dongle!
• I will provide food for lunch, what would you like?

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Week 4

Crit #1

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Week 5

Chelsea’s Crit

Discuss the Pedabyte Age & Deep Blue

Cognitve Set / Einstellung/Training to the medium.

How might this knowledge from psychology relate to interactive works?

How to design a psychology test

Color changing card trick, scroll down for added info on change blindness, and inattentional blindness.

How are cognitive sets related to change blindness and inattentional blindness, and what are the implications for interactive works?

>>

The Semantic Web

The Shortest Path to the Future Web

From Here to There

The Web As Database

“the web is a graph, feeds & (XML/HTML) docs are tree structures which can be mapped onto a graph.”

Micoformats:

Microformats are embedded meta-data used to make Web documents smarter (HTML, XHTML, RSS, ATOM, BLOGS, XML). They don't affect how your documents are rendered by a browser. But they have a huge (positive) impact on the ability of Web applications/tools to collect, understand, and process the information in your Web pages.

Microformats are tiny bits of information injected into Web pages. When you add together the tiny bits of information over thousands or millions of Web pages, you have a mountain of valuable information that can help with searching, understanding, and processing the Web.

Tools:

Firefox Operator Plugin >> demo

Getting started

hCard, Xcalendar, Xreview, XFN creators

hiding the hCard via css

Yahoo! Pipes - the first GUI builder for the biggest database in the world, the Web itself.

ReadWriteWeb: the Ultimate Yahoo! Pipes Creations List

Tony Hirst has a bunch of interesting pipes.

Media in Transition: April ’09 MIT conference

Assignment:

Work on your projects.

Post related materials to our Friendfeed

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Week 6

Announcement:

Are any of you interested in participating in a performance on October 30^th? Free Dinner….

Chelsea’s Crit

Your Pipes

Friendfeed

Tech:

Pipe output as JSON->HTML/Javascript

• The Pipe
• The HTML/Javascript

Projects:

• Virta-Flaneurazine
• the artists who made this will be giving a talk at the New Museum in NYC this Saturday!
• Sosolimited ReConstitution ‘08
• ReConstitution will be shown at the Corcoran on October 15^th – tickets are still available!!

Polluting our own (data) stream:

• Infamous AOL user search data leak of ‘06
• TrackMeKnot
• what trackmenot looks like in action
• Blog Post About TrackMe Knot
• Chris Oakley
• With Cognitive Sets in mind, and our readiness to always train to the media, what does obfuscating our surfing history actually do to/for us?
• Data Visualization – check Hans Rosling’s lecture
• gapminder.orgRemember the Pedabyte Age?
• Is obfuscating/demonizing data a good plan, when much useful data is unavailable?
• Visual Cognition Lab Experiments

Bear in mind:

• If you are creating a web based project, in particular a web-portfolio, USE MICROFORMATS

Lunch

Studio Time

Assignment: Crit Next Week!

Week 7

Another article on the AOL search disaster of ’06 – specifically on users who seem to be planning a murder…

New SF science museum

!!Crit!!

Assignment:

please read this article and the embedded .pdf (of Gavin Potter’s brief paper on how he’s handling the Netflix prize).

This Psychologist may outsmart the Math brains, an article on Potter from wired.

And this excerpt from the introduction to Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget’s book ‘Genetic Epistemology’:

“…In cases involving the physical world the abstraction is abstraction from the objects themselves. A child, for instance, can heft objects in his hands and realize that they have different weights - that usually big things weigh more than little ones, but that sometimes little things weigh more than big ones. All this he finds out experientially, and his knowledge is abstracted from the objects themselves. But I should like to give an example, just as primitive as that one, in which knowledge is abstracted from actions, from the coordination of actions, and not from objects. This example, one we have studied quite thoroughly with many children, was first suggested to me by a mathematician friend who quoted it as the point of departure of his interest in mathematics. When he was a small child, he was counting pebbles one day; he lined them up in a row, counted them from left to right, and got ten. Then, just for fun, he counted them from right to left to see what number he would get, and was astonished that he got ten again. He put the pebbles in a circle and counted them, and once again there were ten. He went around the circle in the other way and got ten again. And no matter how he put the pebbles down, when he counted them, the number came to ten. He discovered here what is known in mathematics as commutativity, that is, the sum is independent of the order. But how did he discover this? Is this commutativity a property of the pebbles? It is true that the pebbles, as it were, let him arrange them in various ways; he could not have done the same thing with drops of water. So in this sense there was a physical aspect to his knowledge. But the order was not in the pebbles; it was he, the subject, who put the pebbles in a line and then in a circle. Moreover, the sum was not in the pebbles themselves; it was he who united them. The knowledge that this future mathematician discovered that day was drawn, then, not from the physical properties of the pebbles, but from the actions that he carried out on the pebbles. This knowledge is what I call logical mathematical knowledge and not physical knowledge.”

And this quote from Charles S. Peirce, from a paper entitled “The Scientific Method and Fallibilism”

“…It is a matter of real fact to say that in a certain room there are two persons. It is a matter of fact to say that each person has two eyes. It is a mater of fact to say there are four eyes in the room. But to say that if there are tow persons, and each person has tow eyes there will be four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation.”

Write a paragraph about what you feel the connection between the Piaget and Peirce excerpts and the Gavin Potter paper, and the blog post is, and post it to our Friendfeed site.

Hint: When we are asked to quantify, or scale emotional states/levels of preference, and then the resulting numbers are averaged, or used in a calculation, and the result of that calculation is transposed into a suggestion for something else we might like – a book, or movie, for example – how accurate is that process?

What did Gavin Potter incorporate into his algorithm to improve the accuracy of Cinemach?

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Week 8

INET-WEB.COM – Creative Geniuses, Internships?

Gavin Potter makes a point about scaling our feelings, and how when we do that two things happen:

1. We identify the way we feel, and
2. We rank them numerically.

Q: what was his solution to improve the Cinematch algorithm?

What ‘concerns’ have been expressed about Gavin’s solution, in regard to what it is asking of the user?

We train to the medium:

What is the implication of living in a world where we are increasingly surrounded by media that asks us to scale our environmental responses?

“Facts create norms, not illumination.” Werner Herzog

We can think of facts as concretized knowledge.

The computer processes concretized knowledge.

Our minds deal in degrees of knowledge and understanding that are far more nuanced than the computer can interpret.

Remember the Jaron Lanier article, and his thoughts on the Turing Test?

HotOrNot

RateMyTurban

TotallyLooksLike – concretized comparison…. Why do I think that?

Pandora/Music Genome Project

Remember we talked about Cognitive Sets?

And that knowledge is operative – that the environment changes as we change.

How are we changing the environment and how might these changes be affecting us – what is our environment teaching us, what sort of cognitive set is it presenting?

Remember the Chris Oakley video (the catalogue)we watched?

How might we re-shoot this video with cognitive sets, and environmental psychology in mind?

Match.com Vs. okcupid

The computer is understood as a tool for enhanced inquiry and understanding. In regard to what we’ve just been discussing, is it? what do we gain from keeping more accurate accounts of our thoughts and feelings offline?

Allen Ginsburg, Ah! Sunflower

WOWOW

Mikey Sklar – RFID – Samantha Bee

The Empathic and the Wearable

Kelly Dobson

XS Labs Skorpions

Dentyne Gum Why?

- burger king studio

- burger king game

Getting Started With Arduino – a concise book from O’Reilly

Assignment:

Continue working on your projects, next crit in two weeks!

Week 9

A few inspirational videos, then STUDIO TIME

W®tf do ideas come from?

Jill Bolte Taylor

Sir Kenneth Robinson, Schools Kill Creativity

ZeFrank

Web Design ToolBox

Nassim Taleb on fora.tv

1. The Black Swan
1. Hard to predict
2. High consequence
3. Retrospectively predictable (the illusion of predictability, history, economics, astrology)
2. Silent evidence.
1. Episodes of tension that lead to war, but
2. There were many episodes of tension that didn’t lead to war…
3. A pool of evidence that Doesn’t prove the point.
4. Probability – we analyze based on who survived, not what we had (the pool of those) when we started.
5. We take a discrete pool of evidence and extrapolate/predict.
6. We are bad at predicting, we engage in overcausation.
3. The problem with predicting
1. We make predictions
2. We observe the outcomes.
3. Typically, you remember what you remember having predicted is more consistent with what you observed. So
4. you don’t remember what you actually predicted. But you revise your memory of what you actually predicted to conform to what you observe.
5. We do the same thing with our intentions.
6. This is a psychological bias.
7. Remember this: visual cognition lab ?
8. Sextus Empericus.
1. Did not like theories, to extend into unobservables.
2. They did not like to generalize.
9. How to turn lack of knowledge, and lack of understanding into action.
4. Mediocristan
1. When your sample is large, exceptions can happen but they will not be consequential to the total.
2. Law of large numbers.
3. Without the law of large numbers there is no statistics.
4. Mediocristan is dominated by the mediocre, the ‘average’.
5. Extremistan
1. Whenever you take a large sample, a small number of observations in that domain will represent the total.
2. Extremistan is dominated by the exception
3. Things are highly concentrated in Extremistan.
6. Uncertainty
1. Uncertainties in physics average out – table example.
2. Most major risks we take are because we didn’t realize beforehand that we are taking great risks.
7. The illusion of control
1. The smaller the probability, the less observable it is going to be, and the more you are going to have to rely on theory.
2. The probability doesn’t matter as much as the event.
8. Inverse Problems.
1. Confirmation Bias, (aka cognitive sets) – we want to confirm our theories, how does the current format of the web, specifically search engines contribute to this condition?
2. if you present people with what they expect to see, and if those materials embody probabilities we remain trapped in closed, experiential circuit based on satisfying their own needs and desires as triggered by interaction with a system designed to generate desire and immediately offer their satisfaction.
3. Learning from negative advice – negative advice works better than positive advice.
9. What not to do.
1. Elephants – elders remember events, societies keep them around, and have kept them around as advisors on rare events.
2. Knowledge without a cause.
3. Don’t store theories, store facts.
4. Give respect to the oldest member of our collective family, the planet.
10. The Internet

CRIT NEXT WEEK

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Week 10

CRIT

Befpre there was Google there was the idea for google à initial presentation from ’97, “The anatomy of a large-scale, hypertextual web search engine”, by Sergie Brin and Lawrence Page

Google documentary, ‘07

Marissa Mayer on where Google’s ideas come from

Di Mainstone talk today at 4pm in M110

Assignment:

Please continue to develop your projects

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Week 11

The End of Online Anonymity?

• The Evolution of Privacy

Data Viz:

Movie Posters with Brand Integration

Google Flu Trends (thanks Dan)

• CNN report on google flu trends

exactitudes, what type are you?

Using Processing to determine primary color in Sophia Coppola’s films

Hackers Documentary

JG Ballard, BBC interview with critic Tom Sutcliffe

Final Project Work –

• Documentation
• ishowu + brief explanation of project!

Assignment:

Final Project

***If you need assistance with your project outside of class PLEASE contact Sam Sheffield – he is eager to help you! jss@problemboard.com

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Week 12

Final Project Workshop

***Don’t forget to document you work with ishowu and bring me a disc next week!!!

Week 13

Final Crit – please bring your documentation with you!

Discussion of readings:

1. A Real Little Game: the performance of belief in pervasive play
2. Herbert Simon, study guide for "Sciences of the Artificial" Chapters 1 and 4

“For every complex problem there is always one simple solution that is always wrong.”

G.B. Shaw

Training to the medium.

The environment as mold.

The omnipresence of artifice in the built environment.

Goal oriented behavior in concert with the various elements of an environment produce complexity.

Complexity is an aggregate of relatively simple intentions sharing the same space and time.

We have the ability to consider this – to locate a perspective from which we can observe these interactions by understanding the various parts that comprise an environment and the various relationships between the parts that occur over time.

ARG’s, for example, implement a series of goal-oriented actions whose success depends on their relationship with the environment that they are implemented into. In other words, ARG’s provide a perspective on the complex web of interactions that comprise an environment because they are designed to use that complexity to survive. ARGs are inherently “critical” in that they realize their own intentions solely by re-purposing the elements of another environment. Their intentions are realized by alternate uses of pre-existing elements within an environment. When we re-purpose “things” we cause them to reveal both their “new” function as well as their previous function. The relationship between the two can be understood as criticality.

I am encouraging you to think about how whatever you built interacts with the environment into which it is employed. The fact is that it must interact with the environment whether you think about it or not. If you think carefully about the chain reaction that your creation is inevitably a part of you will increase the potential of your work to attain criticality.

There is this illusion that simplicity speaks to some sort of profound truth. Simplicity, in the world of interface design, more often speaks to a delimiting influence and a control mechanism that makes the work of the designers’ clients easier….

Foucault quote

Todays’ tech demo:

voxeo

***You will need server space to store your scripts. Your mica server space is fine as the scripts will be very small. If you don’t have server space please see me and we’ll get you some. I suggest you create a folder specifically for your callxml applications***

1. Go here: Voxeo Account Registration, complete registration. It is completely free.
2. Check email for PIN
3. Login on upper right corner
4. callxml 3.0 documentation/tutorials – click on the “learning callxml 3.0” link under the “Getting Started” header. Callxml 3.0 is a significant improvement over its predecessors. It is close to an ECMA and supports Regular Expressions via Xpath. It is currently in Beta release but seems reliable.
5. Do the Helloworld and beyond applications.
6. Use the Application Manager from within the voxeo developer site. When you have uploaded a script to your server, create a new application via the Application Manager – make sure you click on the “callxml 3.0 Beta” button.
7. Use the debugger to check your script for syntax errors.
8. Search the “extreme support forums” – most of your questions will be answered there.
9. Please ask me if you have any questions.

Some info on using sound files:

If you would like to upload and access sound files from your voicexml applications, you need to make soundfiles. I suggest your create mono, 8bit .wav files using either:

Soundhack, or

• Audacity, or
• Argeiphontes Lyre, or
• Whatever you like…

If you would like to play long sound files see this post from the voxeo forums:

jon brumit's flash (and other) instruments (and a whole lot more….)

Some Flash Comm Server stuff (we have flash comm. Server installed in this room on every machine):

Streaming MP3's with Flash Communications Server

Flash Communications Server Streaming Tutorial

Flash Communications Server with Mysql

Assignment

1. Edward A. Shanken, Online Texts , read “Hot2Bot”, and “Tele-Agency”
2. Jack Burnham, from Artforum, September 1968, on Systems Aesthetics
3. Here is the first part – chapters 1-7, of McLuhan’s Understanding Media: the extensions of man You don’t have to read it, but, here it is if you want to take a look :Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, introduction and Chapter 1

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Week 4

The show.

Blackboard.

Micros.

Your plans.

Discussion board(s):

http://blackboard.mica.edu

class # = IM 351 A

Presently there is one board called “IM tech”, one board called “art and projects”, and one board called “exhibition”.

• “IM tech” is to foster exchange of ideas, questions, and answers relating to technical issues connected with your projects for this class.

• “art and projects” is for links to things that you find interesting and relevant to our work.

• “exhibition” is for information regarding the show, and, very importantly, it is where you must post your equipment and space requirements for the show.

Please contribute freely and visit often.

Exhibition:

Important dates:

• November 4. All equipment requirements must be posted on the exhibition discussion board.

• November 18. All info for posters and wall mountings must be posted to the discussion board. All decisions regarding what goes where, and who will do what.

• Opening, Saturday, December 3, 10pm. This is the date and time all works must be installed and ready to show.

• December 4. This is “portfolio day” at Mica. There will be approximately 1500 visitors to the campus – most of who will come to see our show.

• December 16. This is the closing date of the show. All work must be de-installed and ready for return to exhibitions by the 17^th.

Logistics:

• I will submit all equipment needs to exhibitions, who will pass the list on to campus tech. Exhibitions will provide pedestals, campus tech will provide tech stuff. We (IM) will provide some tech stuff, and locks for the pedestals.

• It is essential that we have a layout of the show – who will put what where and how everything will be secured by November 18^th. Campus Tech is very concerned about the security of their gear and are relentless in their search for potential weak spots and oversights.

• Kate (AA for IM, room 201) will turn on all of the works every morning. Someone from our class must turn the works off every evening, sometime around 10pm.

• We have the use of the Rosenberg Gallery. We have the use of 217. We have the use of 208.

>>

From above:

Basic Stamp/Micro-controllers/”Physical Computing”

Micro-controllers are small, programmable computers on a chip, roughly the size of a “AA” battery. Currently, the most popular micro-controller is the Basic Stamp. They are programmable in basic, and can be used to gather data (via sensors), process that data, and then control an output device. As a local alternative, look at these: Kronos Robotics . More functionality than the BS2 and less expensive. Micro Controllers can be used in conjunction with Max, Perl, Cell Phones, etc… as custom interfaces. Micro controllers are in the domain of “Physical Computing” – a phrase used by some people at ITP at New York University. Some of these people wrote a book on Physical Computing – it is a fine introduction that includes code, images and references. If you are considering work in physical computing, please buy the book as soon as possible!

B.E.A.M robotics

• Intro
• solarbotics - B.E.A.M.

Some important things to consider:

If you work on a Mac, use:

• Basic Stamp
• Wiring
• Arduino

If you work on a PC, use:

• Basic Stamp
• Wiring
• Arduino
• Kronos Robotics
• PicBasic
• Mbasic Pro

If you work on Linux, use all of the above, plus:

• gumstix

Here are some links to gumstix Linux cluster swarms (thanks Sam):

• gumstix swarms, 1
• gumstix from discovery
• gumstix and a private www
• gumstix swarms, 2

IMPORTANT Processing NOTE:

It runs really slowly on Tiger. Be careful!

Proce55ing –

1. Proce55ing in the classroom. Check it out. Java based coding environment...
2. Nice intro tutorial
3. Worshop/intro compares Proce55ing to flash/director - some of the code samples don't work, though....
4. Toxi works in both Director and now Proce55ing - EXCELLENT STUFF - with source code!!!
5. flight404 - Excellent work in Proce55ing - no source code....

Some amazing stuff:

Self-Replicating Robots from Cornell Robotics Lab

Something to consider when doing your project:

Passive Dynamics and Walking Robots

Jamie O'Shea

Gratin - a wonderful list of net and data art

net art list from Uni in Munich

net/interactive art links

Now we break.

Later I will sit down with each of you to find out what you are thinking about for a project.

________________________________________________________________________

Week 5

works:

2. Turux
3. re-move
4. Dextro - what do the first three have in common?
5. Gratin - a wonderful list of net and data art
6. net art list from Uni in Munich
7. net/interactive art links
8. the web as canvas
9. Google's top digital artist hits...
10. Proce55ing in the classroom. Check it out. Java based coding environment...

Processing –

1. Proce55ing in the classroom. Check it out. Java based coding environment...
2. Nice intro tutorial
3. Worshop/intro compares Proce55ing to flash/director - some of the code samples don't work, though....
4. Toxi works in both Director and now Proce55ing - EXCELLENT STUFF - with source code!!!
5. flight404 - Excellent work in Proce55ing - no source code....

Assignment

Read:

1. "Quirk" = empathy, "Woogles" , from Joe Bates and Scott Neal Reilly

________________________________________________________________________

Week 6

Bagle Visualization – thanks Sam.

zigzag

Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines – thanks Sam.

Enactive space & perception, swarm intelligence., Paper (.pdf) - thanks Damon

Self designed structures, Paper1 (.pdf), Paper2 (.pdf) thanks Damon

Briefly, Game stuff “walkers_towers_trackers”.

http://www.rouvelle.com/maps/gmps_icon2.html

Strategies for online/offline interactions.

99rooms – an potential form.

From here to there:

Today I want to discuss the online/offline worlds and how we can send data from one to the other.

Physical Computing

magicbike

water music

The game is to figure out how to sense (which, for our discussion means DIGITIZE) the offline world.

Once we have digits then we can move the data freely into different environments (web page, data base, internet, etc…).

If we create interaction (user influence/data processing/feedback) we will have something interesting…

Key elements:

• Think about how certain elements exist in the offline world, what the essence(s) of that element is(are), and how those essences can be realized (transposed) with elements from the online world, and vice versa.

• Pick the proper tools for each phase of the project.
• Avoid waste/technobloat.
• Assume that there is a less complicated solution than the one you came up with first, and work toward that.
• Think broadly, e.g., don’t be desktop-centric. As we have seen, computers come in all shapes and packages.
• The relationship between the online/offline digital/analog worlds should be one of mutual respect and balance.
• There is a lot of important art waiting to be done that addresses the relationship between online/offline.

Gear:

speakjet - sound IC

434 Mhz rf Modules

AM transmitter circuit

Ramsey Electronics has great kits

relay

Bend Sensor

Accelerometer

Motor Control

Serial Input (think sensor data) in Processing:

1. Launch Processing from the “Dos Batch” Icon, below the main “Processing” Icon – you need to do this so that you have access to the serial setting.
2. Go to the Tangible media examples and pick Binary Input.

Sound in Processing:

1. Sonia by Amit Pitaru is a “plug-in” for using either .wav or .aiff sound files in Processing.
2. Sonic Resources from Tom Erbe of CalArts, check out SoundEffects.
3. D-soundpro/DSPquattro , check it out.
4. brothercake is great site. Check out the Freeware links for sound processors for use with processing, , a lot to explore

Connecting Processing to MAX, Reaktor, Flash, and beyond:

1. OpenSoundControl (OSC) homepage, specifically: osc for processing by sojamo.
2. flosc , from Ben Chun, also excellent tutorial by eric socolofsky
3. Java , you’ll need it for flosc

________________________________________________________________________

Week 7

Measuring small voltages with RCTIME

(command familiar to Basic Stamp users and also for PicBasic and Mbasic. In order for this to work you need a suitable op amp to amplify the small voltage from whatever you are trying to sense. I suggest an LT1078 (aka TLC 1078).

Consider this:

There are literally hundreds of types of op amps. The 741 is an older type, is available at radioshack….yet it is not suitable for this application. It used tobe that most op-amp circuits were powered by a +/- 15 or +/- 12 volt power supply. That is like taking two 12 volt batteries and connecting them in series. The junction between the batteries is attached to ground, and the +12 volts in relation to that was the positive supply for the op amp and the -12 volts was the negative supply. Then, the inputs and outputs of the op-amp could swing both
+ and - in relation to ground. The input signal would be fed into the circuit in relation to ground. The op-amp would not operate correctly if you tried to force the input or output too near either +12 or -12 volts. There are still a lot of good reasons to have both a + and a - power supply.

However, op-amp technology has advanced hugely since the 741 came out. Now there are op-amps that can operate off of a single 5 volt
power supply, and on some of them the input or the output or both can swing close to the power supply voltages. In some cases, the input
can even swing beyond the power supply voltage by a small amount. These are called "single supply" op amps. They are convenient when
working with things like the Stamp, which has a handy 5 volt power supply.

Another characteristic of the every op-amp is its input offset voltage. Older op-amps like the '741 have offset voltages on the order of 10 millivolts. This is like an internal signal that is added in series with your real signal. It is possible to zero that out with some adjustments in the circuit, which takes additional parts and hassle. The worst thing about it is, though, that that offset changes with temperature and power supply voltage and other
factors. Think about your 0.6 millivolt signal. That is small in relation to the internal offset of a '741 op-amp. Some standard single supply op-amps like the LT1078 (one of my favorites, mentioned above) have offsets on the order of 70 microvolts (0.07 millivolt). That is much better. And CAZ (commutating auto zero) op amps like the LTC1051 use "switched capacitor" techniques to achieve offsets well under 10 microvolts. And it operates from a single 5 volt supply. That is why I suggested that for best accuracy.

The challenge is to find a way to measure a small input voltage using the RCtime command. The answer here is an integrater circuit using an op-amp. The output voltage, V(t), approaches the threshold steadily with time, at a rate determined by Vin. The circuit uses a transistor current sink in the amplifier output, to get simple current characteristics. The collector of the transistor (or n-channel mosfet) in the circuit acts as a stiff current sink, and the voltage at pin p0 starts at +5 volts and decreases toward the Stamp threshold at 1.4 volts. The voltage across R1 is equal to the input voltage at pin 3 of the op-amp, and for the circuit to operate properly, the input voltage Vin has to be less than 1 volt. For higher input voltages, the signal input voltage must be attenuated with a voltage divider. 

rct VAR Word




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HIGH 0 ' initially start with p0 high




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DO




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 RCTIME 0,1,rct ' voltage on p0 decreases at rate proportional to Vin




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 HIGH 0




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 DEBUG ? rct




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LOOP




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
' 2*rct ~= 3.6 * R1 * C1 / Vin




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
' R1 in ohms, C1 in microfarads, Vin volts.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
' rct in units of 2 microseconds (BS2, BS2e, BS2pe), 2*rct is units of microseconds.

The op-amp needs to be a single supply type (see above), and preferably one with rail to rail output capabilities.   It needs to respond to Vin down to zero, and the output needs to swing high enough to drive the transistor base into conduction.   That will be the voltage across R1 (=Vin) plus the threshold voltage of the transistor (~0.6 volts for bipolar, more for mosfet).

When the Stamp does a HIGH 0 command, the pin p0 needs to be able to pull the node all the way up to Vdd.  However, it will be sourcing all of the current I, which will cause an undesireable error due to the output resistance of the Stamp pin, a voltage drop.   The output resistance of the Stamp 2pe is around 50 ohms, so the error with a 100 microamp current will be 5 millivolts.   That is probably not significant.  Keep the current low by choosing a high enough value of R1 for the application.   If Vin is as high as 1 volt, then R1= 10kohms.

Choose the capacitor so that the RCtime value will be approximately 100 when Vin is maximum.   For Vin=1 volt maximum and R1=10kohms, a good choice would be C1=0.01µF.

One nice thing about the circuit is that it can be made to operate with very low voltages, for example, voltages from pH probes.

If the input to the above circuit is a small AC voltage, the effect will be an integration of the positive half-cycles only. For example, if the input is piezo film or a microphone with a few tens of millivolts of output, responding to vibration, the circuit will integrate the sound intensity, and it will. 

________________________________________________________________________

Week 8

We will have a brief presentation and then I will sit down with those of you whom I haven’t seen in a while to find out what you are working on.

Important Dates:

• Next class: be able to tell me what you will do for your final project and, if possible, what your technical requirements are.

• November 10^th: All of your tech needs must be posted to the blackboard so that I can ensure you will get what you need.

• Tech needs = hardware/software, pedestals, etc… literally everything you require to present your piece

• December 2-3: Install the works in 217 and 208

• December 4: 10am, show opens, all works must be running

Lawrence Lessig Talk

Transcript of Above

Mr Lessig is clearly angered and confused by the seemingly utter lack of action on the part of the populace in the face of these clear erosions of the “creative commons”, and the dire implications for our collective future. Why have we become robots, focused on learning specific software apps without poking our heads out and looking around to get a broader view of our emerging environment?

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Lessig’s talk is a few years old. Since then a few “advancements” have taken place that seem to confirm some of his assertions:

The patriot act etched in silicon:

Fritz Chip

Intel Pentium D and Macintosh – please read the entire article

Further reading:

Who Will Control the Internet? – Kenneth Neil Cukier. This is a very well considered and informative article. If you care about the subjects mentioned above and would like to participate in future conversations on this topic PLEASE read this.

Some examples:

P2P

• P2P acknowledges the parallelism of the internet and makes use of it via the www/html/browsers.
• P2P is something other than the WWW.
• Simple example: data lives on local machines and not, exclusively, on servers.
• P2P is now seen by the TC community as its (“our”) greatest threat.

• P2P PPT from a Perl Conference in June '01

slashdot/IM mess

jabber

OK, but what can artists do?

• Form an opinion on these issues and speak your mind.

• Artists and other Daring, Bold Thinkers can create works that provide conceptual models for the general public that suggest alternatives and foster critical dialogues.

Here are some examples/aka another IMIII “wtf?” moment.

What is this and why is it important?

Lessig makes the point of the Cotton Gin and its’ patent. Lessig’s comment is that the Cotton Gin could be taken apart by anyone who wanted to find out how it worked. While it was, legally, patented in Washington. It was a part of the “creative common” as it was available to everyone. The digital world seems less available, and more vulnerable to governmental censure.

I love the .walk applets because they are both literal and virtual computers – e.g., they are providing a view into how the computer works. They are algorithmic and can be represented in pseudo-code, while providing a conceptual framework with which to discuss computers and the way they affect our lives. They may actually even point to the future of computing, and here’s how:

• The computer can be understood as a bank of on/off switches whose task it is to map specific inputs to unique outputs.

• The computer was once understood as a local device for essentially private computation. The computer now is the internet, and the devices with which we access the internet are plentiful and continue to multiply. In spite of the proliferation of modems (any device capable of I/O operations with the internet is a modem) and the expansion of the internet, the description of the computer – and the internet as computer still stands.

• The internet (a network of networked computers) implies a parallel structure, but, due to the inherent sequential, linear architecture of the computer (the presence of the scheduler makes the point). The internet needs human interaction and must be incorporated and understood as an environmental resource in order to become part of a collaborative, truly parallel structure.

• Humans are also computers, but the environments that we compute in differ from the environment of the computer. Briefly (too briefly…), our computations can’t, generally, be described as functions the way the digital computers can. All of the stuff in our environment has a deep multi-dimensionality – it’s all metadata, in other words, the elements I use to solve a specific problem are simultaneously involved in many other computations in the minds and lives of many other people. It is virtually impossible to clearly map (or even define) inputs to UNIQUE outputs.

• The offline world is one of simultaneity, parallelism, collaboration and interaction.

• The intersection of the online/offline world must be one of simultaneity, parallelism, collaboration and interaction.

• ARGs, (Synopsis, details, details, details...) and dotwalk are movements toward this.

Our task, culturally, is to develop ways to integrate the online world into the offline. This is inevitable, btw, and the sooner artists/bold creative thinkers begin to participate in the development of the discourse the better off we will all be.

Here’s why:

“We’ve hardly mastered user experience on the web and now we’re facing a future where the detritus of our lives will be “tagged” with RFID chips. How do we design for ambient findability?

The user experience will begin with a keyword search, but we’ll have all sorts of new facets and filters for refining our query. I may want to Google my possessions or the contents of my house or your bookshelf. Last week I went to the shopping mall for the first (and last) time this year. It was a horrible experience. I had to physically drag my body from store to store in search of a specific product. I desperately wanted to Google the Mall. And thanks to RFID, it may not be too long before that’s possible. Of course, Endeca may be a better choice than Google, since their Guided Navigation approach fits perfectly with an increasingly faceted future.

Of course, it’s tough to predict how this will all pan out. A few futurists including Adam Greenfield, Mike Kuniavsky, Bruce Sterling, and myself have written about the user experience in a world of ambient findability, but we’re only scratching the surface, and we’re all probably suffering from apophenia anyway.”

---from you're it!

Here is a series of works that seem to address these ideas:

• Yahoo! Mindset.
• Endeca

These were submitted by Sam Sheffield:

• dotwalk
• Crystalpunk Workshop

Here is one of my favorites who makes an appearance in the previous link

• Usman Haque

Related Links:

Interactive Computation:

mathematical functions

Turing Machines (read the sections on functions and relations – makes the points about mapping of inputs to unique outputs more clearly, perhaps, than the previous link)

Week 10

Callxml/php/mysql. IOW:database stuff

Goal is to connect your cell to a database.

callXML 3.0

quickstart guide

Awesome callxml scripts

###################################

This script uses choices and goto for navigation, then sends an email to someone.

<callxml version="3.0">

<do label="initial">

<say>

welcome to the virtual shopping mall.

you may say the department store you wish to visit to start the elevator,

or you may simply press the floor number on your telephone keypad.

</say>

</do>

<do label="Start" choices="1st Floor (first, housewares, 1), 2nd Floor (second, bed and bath, 2), 3rd Floor (third, sporting goods, 3), 4th Floor (fourth, lounge, 4)">

<say>

you may choose housewares on the first floor,

bed and bath on the second floor,

sporting goods on the third floor,

or the lounge on the fourth floor.

</say>

<wait value="5s"/>

<on event="choice:1st Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice; </say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:2nd Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice;</say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:3rd Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice;</say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:4th Floor">

<say> Chillin at the lounge, sending some e-mails </say>

<sendemail from=" whoever@whatever.wherever " to="phone#@mobile.mycingular.com - replace with proper">

Don't forget to start the coffee.

</sendemail>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

</do>

<on event="error">

<sendemail from=" whoever@whatever.wherever " to="phone###@mobile.mycingular.com" type="debug">

We caught an error in our application. Details follow...

</sendemail>

</on>

</callxml>

####################################

sms style, with callerID

####################################

<callxml version="3.0">

<do label="initial">

<say>

welcome to the virtual shopping mall.

you may say the department store you wish to visit to start the elevator,

or you may simply press the floor number on your telephone keypad.

</say>

</do>

<do label="Start" choices="1st Floor (first, housewares, 1), 2nd Floor (second, bed and bath, 2), 3rd Floor (third, sporting goods, 3), 4th Floor (fourth, lounge, 4)">

<say>

you may choose housewares on the first floor,

bed and bath on the second floor,

sporting goods on the third floor,

or the lounge on the fourth floor.

</say>

<wait value="5s"/>

<on event="choice:1st Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice; </say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:2nd Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice;</say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:3rd Floor">

<say> now arriving at $session.lastchoice;</say>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:4th Floor">

<say> Chillin at the lounge, sending some e-mails </say>

<sendemail from=" whoever@whatever.wherever " to="$session.callerid;@mobile.mycingular.com">

Don't forget to start the coffee.

</sendemail>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

</do>

<on event="error">

<sendemail from="whoever@whatever.wherever" to="$session.callerid;@mobile.mycingular.com" type="debug">

We caught an error in our application. Details follow...

</sendemail>

</on>

</callxml>

callxml ->php->mysql (this will be in two parts – will finish next week)

First you'll need to find a MySQL server that you can connect to. You can download a free version of MySQL from http://www.mysql.com. The instructions for setting up a MySQL server are on that site as well.

Before you even start your PHP coding, you need to create a database in MySQL to store your data. Make certain that you have your MySQL daemon running. In the instructions that follow, replace DBNAME with whatever name you want to name your database. If you are using Windows, you need to execute any MySQL commands from C:\mysql\bin. For Linux, you can issue the commands from any shell prompt. To create your database, issue the following command:

prompt>mysqladmin create DBNAME 

OR, you can simply log into mysql, in which case your prompt will be:

Mysql>

To set up the tables in your new database, you need to log into your MySQL server. This is done by using the MySQL command-line interface.

1. At the prompt, issue the following command (assuming that you are using the default setup—otherwise, use your normal login):

prompt> mysql –u root

This command logs you into the server. From here, you can create tables, delete (drop) tables, and modify the data in your tables. But first, you must specify which database on the server you want to use because the MySQL server is capable of hosting multiple databases.

2. At the MySQL prompt, enter the following command. Be sure to replace DBNAME with your database's name.

mysql> use DBNAME;

The MySQL server responds with:

Database changed

You've now selected your database. Any of the basic SQL queries that you enter are directed to this database.

3. Now you can create the table you'll be using for the upcoming projects. Enter the following commands at the MySQL prompt. Hit Return after each line. MySQL doesn't try to interpret the command until it sees a semicolon (;), so the command itself isn't really "executed" on the server until you enter the last line.

If the server gives you a big ERROR and spits out a bunch of garbage at you, just try again from the TOP. You need to enter each line in the sequence from the beginning exactly as shown.

mysql> CREATE TABLE news (
-> news_id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
-> heading VARCHAR(48),
-> body TEXT,
-> date DATE,
-> author_name VARCHAR(48),
-> author_email VARCHAR(48),
-> PRIMARY KEY(news_id));

NOTE

The -> prompt that you see after entering a line in the MySQL server is telling you that it's waiting for more input before it does anything.

The server responds with:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Congratulations! You've just created your first table in MySQL.

Putting Content into Your Database with PHP

Now that you have had a little experience using SQL queries from the MySQL command line, lets try some queries using PHP. Using PHP for the task is less cumbersome and more flexible. Above all, it can easily be done using a Web browser.

The logic behind PHP and database interaction is simple:

1. Connect to the database server and log in.

2. Choose the database to use.

3. Send SQL queries to the server to add, delete, and modify data.

You don't even have to worry about closing the connection to the server because PHP does it for you.

We will be connecting callxml to the php script next week. If you would like to forge ahead, take a look at the callxml documentation and click on the <goto> element. In your php script, use this:

<?PHP

$s = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar"];

$s1 = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar1"];

but, again, I’ll cover this next week…. For now:

################################################

data_in_rvl.php

<html>

<head>

<title>Putting Data in the Database</title>

</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<?php

/* This program enters news items into a database */

if(isset($submit)):

$dbh=mysql_connect ("localhost", "<username>", "<password>") or die ('I cannot connect to the database because: ' . mysql_error());

mysql_select_db ("<databasename>",$dbh);

$date = date("Y-m-d");

$sql = "INSERT INTO news

VALUES(NULL,'$heading','$body','$date', '$auth','$auth_email')";

mysql_query($sql);

print("<h2>The Data Has Been Entered</h2>\n");

print("<b>You can add another news story below</b><hr>\n");

endif;

?>

<p><h3>Enter your news item into the database</h3>

<form action="data_in_rvl.php" method="post">

Name:<br><input type="text" name="auth"><p>

Email:<br> <input type="text" name="auth_email"><p>

Heading:<br><input type="text" name="heading"><p>

News:<br>

<textarea cols=40 rows=20 name="body" wrap="virtual">

</textarea><p>

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit News!">

</form>

</body>

</html>

##########################################################

data_out_rvl.php

<html>

<head>

<title>Getting Data out of the Database</title>

</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">

<h1>The Daily News</h1>

Order news by

<a href="data_out.php?orderby=date">Date</a>,

<a href="data_out.php?orderby=heading">Heading</a> or by

<a href="data_out.php?orderby=author">Author</a>.

<p>

<form action="data_out_rvl.php" method="POST">

Or only see articles written by (<i>enter author name</i>):

<input type="text" name="author">

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit!">

</form>

<table border="1" cellpadding="3">

<?php

/* This program gets news items from the database */

$dbh=mysql_connect ("localhost", "<username>", "<password>") or die ('I cannot connect to the database because: ' . mysql_error());

mysql_select_db ("<databasename>", $dbh);

if ($orderby == 'date'):

$sql = "select * from news order by 'date'";

elseif ($orderby == 'author'):

$sql = "select * from news order by 'author_name'";

elseif ($orderby == 'heading'):

$sql = "select * from news order by 'heading'";

elseif (isset($submit)):

$sql = "select * from news where author_name = '$author'";

else:

$sql = "select * from news";

endif;

$result = mysql_query($sql);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

print("<tr><td bgcolor=\"#003399\"><b>");

printf("<font color=\"white\">%s</font></b></td></tr>\n",

$row["heading"]);

printf("<td>By: <a href=\"mailto:%s\">%s</a>\n",

$row["author_email"], $row["author_name"]);

printf("<br>Posted: %s<hr>\n",

$row["date"]);

printf("%s</td></tr>\n",

$row["body"]);

}

?>

</table>

</body>

</html>

can’t or don’t want to deal with mysql? – how about creating an xml document that can act as a database that you can parse from another document? THANKS TO SAM SHEFFIELD.

<?PHP

$s = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar"];

$s1 = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar1"];

/*First, I created an empty XML called mymap.xml and stuck it on my server.

It's easy to set traps to determine if the file is present, but it's late...

*/

$file=fopen("mymap.xml","w"); //open the file for writing. If I use "a" instead of "w" I can append the file. NOTE, I HAD TO USE “a” in a few situations...

/*I created $somecontent, which I use to fill mymap.xml using standard XML spacing conventions.

Right now this variable's structure is static, but it could be scripted to work dynamically

*/

$somecontent ="<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?>

<marker>

<walk>

<point lg=\"$s\" lt=\"$s1\" />

</walk>

</marker>";

//I simply tell PHP to write the $somecontent variable contents to the target xml file.

fwrite($file,$somecontent);

fclose($file); //close mymap.xml

echo "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?> ";

echo "<callxml version=\"3.0\"> ";

echo " <do label=\"B1\"><say>this variable=\" $s \" that variable=\" $s1 \"</say></do> ";

echo "</callxml>";

?>

_____________________________________________________________________________

Week 12

Some project ideas:

Make something?

If you’d like to create some sort of Rube Goldberg machine out of projects in Make Magazine as a final project that can be arranged.

Please:

• Select the project(s) out of Make.
• Let me know what you need to make it.

Callxml – PHP – Mysql – Callxml:

Build Database, see last week for scripts, etc…

Callxml->Php:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<callxml version="3.0">

<do label="initial">

<say>

This script will allow you to send variables into a database.

</say>

</do>

<do label="Start" choices="1st (one, 1), 2nd (two, 2),3rd (three, 3),4th (four,4)">

<say>

Please press or say one,

or press or say two,

or press or say three,

or why not press or say four?

</say>

<wait value="5s"/>

<on event="choice:1st">

<say> You have selected the $session.lastchoice; </say>

<assign var = "somevar" value = "WTF"/>

<assign var = "somevar1" value = "A user called in to say they had reached the first floor"/>

<assign var = "somevar2" value = "$session.callerid;@mmode.com"/>

<goto value=" URL to you phpscript.php?" submit="somevar, somevar1,somevar2" method="get"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:2nd">

<say> You have selected the $session.lastchoice; </say>

<assign var = "somevar" value = "but wait there's more"/>

<assign var = "somevar1" value = "Now they're on the 2nd floor!"/>

<assign var = "somevar2" value = "$session.callerid;@mmode.com"/>

<goto value="URL to you phpscript.php?" submit="somevar, somevar1,somevar2" method="get"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:3rd">

<say> You have selected the $session.lastchoice; </say>

<assign var = "somevar" value = "Will someone answer that damn phone?!"/>

<assign var = "somevar1" value = "They are now entering the 3rd floor, won't somebody do something?"/>

<assign var = "somevar2" value = "$session.callerid;@mmode.com"/>

<goto value=" URL to you phpscript.php?" submit="somevar, somevar1,somevar2" method="get"/>

</on>

<on event="choice:4th">

<say> Chillin at the lounge, sending some e-mails </say>

<sendemail from=" whoever@whatever.wherever " to="james_rouvelle@hotmail.com">

Don't forget to start the coffee.

</sendemail>

<goto value="#Start"/>

</on>

</do>

<on event="error">

<sendemail from="whoever@whatever.wherever" to="james_rouvelle@hotmail.com" type="debug">

We caught an error in our application. Details follow...

</sendemail>

</on>

</callxml>

Php->Mysql->Callxml

<?PHP

echo"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>\n" ;

echo "<callxml version=\"3.0\"> \n";

$heading = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar"];

$body = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar1"];

$auth = getenv('REMOTE_ADDR');

$auth_email = $HTTP_GET_VARS["somevar2"];

echo " <do label=\"B1 \"> \n";

echo "<say>this variable=\" $heading \" that variable=\" $auth \"</say>\n";

$dbh=mysql_connect ("localhost", "<username>", "<password>") or die ('I cannot connect to the database because: ' . mysql_error());

mysql_select_db ("<dbname – NOT table>",$dbh);

$date = date("Y-m-d");

$sql = "INSERT INTO news

VALUES(NULL,'$heading','$body','$date', '$auth','$auth_email')";

mysql_query($sql);

mysql_close($dbh);

echo "<goto value=\"http://www.rouvelle.com/call_into_db_2.xml#Start\"/>\n";

echo" </do> ";

echo "</callxml>";

?>

ART:21 :

Art:Tech:Content

Ann Hamilton

Tim Hawkinson

Paul DeMarinis - interview on KQED

Paul Demarinis Interview:

interview on KQED

Paul's works

Edison Effect

Gray Matter

Messenger

Assignment: Please think about what you’d like to do for a final project. We have just two classes left before you will present your works…

Week 13

Today we will install for the portfolio day exhibit in 217. We need a volunteer to act as an ambassador of Interactive Good Will between 10-3, (lunch break around noon) on Sunday. Your responsibilities will include answering questions from the throng of visitors on the works in the exhibit. Any takers?

From Paul DeMarinis’ talk:

The Audible Past – Jonathan Sterne

Jonathan Sterne's Blog

Listening in Paris, James H. Johnson

K 32va32

Some art:

• Cell Phone art compiled by Golan Levin
• yellow arrow
• glowlab at artinteractive : 13 weeks of psychogeography! From glowlab, also:
• Digestion: Changing the Nature of Nature (2005)
• Shannon Spanhake: check out the interview with Ricardo Dominguez, here’s an excerpt:

1. “Recently, I have been experimenting with this idea of what I call as "pokemon pedagogy." The marketing of “Pokemon” was really brilliant, you can make your own playing cards by doing well in the video game, you could get pointers for the video game by watching the cartoon on television, the cartoon advertised discounts on the toys, the toys came with teaser bonus cards to win the card game, and the card game motivated the need for the video game. This is very interesting because it offers so many levels of access which all become interdependent. Each entity has its own narrative, and also as a whole it is a continuous narrative that takes different forms and mediums to complete the entire story. The first iteration of this was done with the catered food visualization and bottled juice projects and now we are working through 'The Ear of the Pollo' project which has become really complex. I don't want to give too much away at this point as it has a long way to go, but layering projects with various types of interdependent articulation seems like a good resolve to answer this haunting question.” – Shannon Spanhake

Sound Familiar???

Profound Thought of the Night

[Category: General]

Courtesy of Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, in his section “On the Eating of Meat”:

Although human phenomena–whether attitudes, wishes or structures–may be looked at on their own, independently of their connections with the social life of people, they are by nature nothing but substantializations of human relations and of human behaviour, embodiments of social and mental life. This is true of speech, which is nothing other than human relations turned into sound; it is true of art, science, economics and politics; it is true both of phenomena that rank high on our scale of values and other which seem trivial or worthless. But it is often precisely these latter, apparently trivial phenomena that give us clear and simple insight into the structure and development of the psyche and its relations which are at first denied us by the former.

”Two of my favorite theses served together like a confection of peanut butter and chocolate: 1) that speech expresses not interiority but exteriority–and thereby is properly the object of social analysis rather than metaphysical speculation (yes, I know he only says it as an aside); and 2) that the smallest, most banal and boring objects carry the possibility within them for the deepest social reflection. And thus Elias goes on to give a capsule account of modernity in his history of the preparation, presentation and consumption of meat. Sure, it’s audacious, but that’s the appeal of Elias.

This week is fashion and ritual week for my seminar, and it’s always a pleasure to read formative texts again in preparation for teaching. This is probably the third or fourth time in my life I’ve taken a complete set of notes on James Carey’s “Cultural Approach to Communication” (perhaps my own perverse enactment of his ritual model) but it’s interesting how in classic essays one sees things anew each time. This time I was struck but his discussion of programmes for action – communication – that immediately followed his discussion of maps. How very Bruno Latour of him.

Elias is formative in a much more proximate sense – he came into my life as I was revising my work on doctors and patients and dealing with questions of revulsion and disgust. But I am drawn in by the Weber-meets-Freud symmetry of his work even as I know if it weren’t for his charismatic mode of presentation, I’d be having none of it. Oh well, I never did want to practice a science anyway. “

posted by Jonathan @ 21:19:24
no comments

Abductive Reasoning (abduction)

Much of Peirce's work deals with the scientific and logical questions of

truth, and knowledge, questions grounded in his experience as a working

logician and experimental scientist, one who was a member of the

international community of scientists and thinkers of his day. He made

important contributions to deductive logic (see below), but was primarily

interested in the logic of science and specifically in what he called

abduction or "hypothesis," as opposed to deduction and induction. Abduction

is the process whereby a hypothesis is generated, so that surprising facts

may be explained. "There is a more familiar name for it than abduction,"

Peirce wrote, "for it is neither more nor less than guessing." Indeed,

Peirce considered abduction to be at the heart not only of scientific

research but of all ordinary human activities as well.

In his "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" (W3: 325-26), Peirce gave the

following classic example of how abduction nests with classical deductive

and inductive reasoning. Peirce begins by positing the following three

statements:

Rule: "All the beans from this bag are white."

Case: "These beans are from this bag."

Result: "These beans are white."

Now let any two of these statements be Givens (their order not mattering),

and let the remaining statement be the Conclusion. The result is an

argument, of which three kinds are possible:

Deduction Induction Abduction

Given Rule Case Rule

Given Case Result Result

Conclusion Result Rule Case

An example:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1997/PSCF9-97Pence.html#15

Please look at the section entitled Pierce’s Theory of Abduction.

“This logical form is the following: "The surprising fact C, is observed.

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course; Hence, there is reason to

suspect that A is true."9

“Abduction then is an explanatory inference from certain data. Pierce claims

that it is an inferential process because reasons can be adduced for the

hypothesis. Although at one point he says: "Reasoning, properly speaking,

cannot be unconsciously performed...For reasoning is deliberate, voluntary,

critical, controlled, all of which it can be if it is done consciously,11

Pierce also describes abduction as a kind of guessing instinct. Abduction,

he says: "...tries what el lume naturale [the light of nature]...can do. It

is really an appeal to instinct.12 "The abductive suggestion comes to us

like a flash. It is an act of insight, although of extremely fallible

insight."

“Peirce also notes an interesting and controversial aspect of abduction when

he says:

‘Abduction, although it is very little hampered by logical rules,

nevertheless is logical inference, asserting its conclusion only

programmatically or conjecturally, it is true, but nevertheless having a

definite logical form.’

Pasteur Example:

Rule: the chickens did not die when injected with new bacilli

Result: chickens injected with old bacilli are vaccinated against the new.

Case: Old bacilli immunize patients against the effects of new bacilli

Questions:

• How does abduction fit in with Shannon Spanhake’s work?
• Are there aesthetic potentials for abduction?

Here’s what I’m getting at:

In abduction we start with an unexpected event, and then explore the possible causal relationships that could lead to such an event. Philosophers use the word ampliative to describe a relationship where the parts of an argument produce a result that differs from what one would expect from a given set of conditions yet can be inferred from a given set of conditions if the individual conditions are amplified.

A form of art can involve presenting the public with an event that seems unexpected, and then organizing elements in such a way as to reveal connections among the conditions from which the unexpected result can in fact be inferred. I find this element in Shannon Spanhake’s work “Digestion: Changing Nature with Nature”. I am also inspired by the form of the piece where it began by Shannon and her group asking questions, and then proceeding from there. They interviewed someone from the city about what was important to them, and then proceeded from there.

Assignment:

1. Work on your projects, please contact me with any questions.

2. read over chapter 5 from an introduction to C. S. Pierce (anti-determinism, tychism, and evolutionism)

3. Mind, Memory, and Archetype, Pt. I, Rupert Sheldrake

1. Please think about what both writers mean by evolution, and think about how determinism and law factor into our efforts as artists, and how interactive works may speak to and explore ideas of law, determinism, and evolution in art and society, and the extents to which “the smallest, most banal and boring objects carry the possibility within them for the deepest social reflection..”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Week 14

Teacher Evaluation Forms… now it’s your turn.

We will have a work session today in advance of next week’s final crit.

With the crit in mind:

• Each one of you will have approximately ten minutes to both present your work and receive comments. Comments are welcome from everyone.

• Please have your work on a CD/DVD/Jump drive, etc… so that they can be quickly loaded onto the teaching station computer.

• Please provide me with a CD that contains whatever you will show in class at the conclusion of class.

· You will present your work in Alphabetical Order.

· We will take a short break mid-way through the crit.

Works that visualize or sonify data:

DATA DIARIEZZZZZZ – Corey Archangel

Remain in Light – Haruki Nishijima

Messa di Voce – Golan Levin and Zach Leiberman

Some thoughts on Digestion: Changing Nature with Nature: (new layout, includes graph)

With this artist statement in mind, I want you to think a bit about the concept of the experiment, and the fact that experimentation to reveal surprising information is always a worthy effort – and carries with it risk – e.g., you might not find something interesting at all, or what you find out might be something that makes you uncomfortable. I think that DoEAT – (Dept. of Ecological Authoring Tactics, Inc) had their hypothoses in mind first, then worked to verify their idea, then developed an ingenious way to present their concept to the public, or, in their words “provide meaningful ways to unfold them (maps) into society through interactive performances and installations”

The DoEat artist statement is very interesting:

• It describes the idea of the artist exploring an environment for connections between elements that are surprising.
• The next step involves creating a map of this “augmented” space (the space is augmented by the layer of connections discovered by the artist).
• The final step is to make this map available to the public by devising a form for its “unfolding” by the public.

We often understand ourselves as developed, or, in the continual act of development. The www and computers are often cited as examples of this development. The American Philosopher C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) wrote, in his essay Law of Mind “for development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities” – and the fact that “the development of the human mind has practically extinguished all feelings, except a few sporadic kinds, sound, colors, smells, warmth, etc… which now appear to be disconnected” (ibid).

Some social theorists have conjectured that the shift in cultural rituals around the globe to more refined and controlled atmospheres is a result of the spread of bourgeois sensibilities. In other words, we are all taking on the characteristics of the bourgeoisie, whether we are aware of it or not. With the Peirce quote in mind, perhaps the so-called bourgeois listening habits described by Jonathan Sterne and Johnson (Listening in Paris – among others) are not the embodiments of the bourgeoisie social habits but more the result of our loosing our senses (!) – the need to ritually focus attention may be a sort of hearing aid.

Perhaps over the past few hundred years we have developed and are at the end of a cycle of development that has “practically extinguished all feelings” – yet we are connected with our poly-sensual (and multi-dimensional) past and we long to be connected with each other and with our environment once again. The web and other technological developments may be a step in this direction – and it can be for the artist to explore our environment, and devise ways to augment our experience, create maps of this augmented space, and the provide opportunities for the general public to unfold these maps and discover/create the collaborative future for themselves. Perhaps we are capable of sensing things that are beyond the senses that we take for granted, and perhaps artists can begin to explore this.

An alternative, experimental approach is also valid, and one might argue that an experimental approach engages a user in an experience that might take them to a personal, creative point of view that could also be socially transformative.

Here are some experiments that may interest you:

Global Consciousness Project – Java applet sonifies data.

can newborn chickens influence a robot? – includes a descrition of some of the early work from: PEAR – Princeton Engineering Anamolies Research.

Random Event Generator experiments

Random Event Generators you can buy, or REG ‘s you can build (scroll down for hardware.)

OpenEEG

“it took a long time to get it to work. but the raw signal goes in well
and is ok as far as accuracy.
 
FFT algorithms are very  difficult to implement, in fact I used
something that was meant for video fft and kinda made it work for me.
not perfect but still got a pretty decent breakdown indication of what
was going on.
 
Also a lot of the times I got a 50 hz noise signal in which sometimes
in ideal conditions I got rid off but other times it was always
present and I just ignored it.
 
Carlos”

openEEG wiki

openEEG device from Olimex

One strategy for experimental work is to find research that interests you and think about ways of incorporating the research into a project of your own.

Research can come from labs, or from elsewhere, take:

Urban Exploration/Infiltration

• "The whole idea is to look at a sign or an area that's obviously off-limits, where you're not supposed to go, and ask, 'What exactly is it that's keeping me out?'" explains Deyo. "We don't break locks or bolts or climb over fences; what we're really overcoming is imaginary barriers that are just understood but barely questioned."

UE, from Salon.com

darkpassage

• Le Chateau Subway

jinx magazine

infiltration

Urban Explorers Network

Urban Explorers Resources, Canada

The list goes on…

The point is that you can utilize the act of exploration as a formative element of your work.

Here is a new piece form Marc Horowitz of National Dinner Tour fame:

A NEW PROJECT: THE HUMAN VIDEO GAME EXPERIMENT

In the Human Video Game Experiment you good people will be able to vote me to a location to perform an experiment. For example, this week one can vote me to go to the lovely Los Angeles subway, get on a car, and organize a group portrait of everyone in it, or you can vote me to go down to the infamous Rodeo Drive and offer up free piggyback rides to all the celebrities and the really rich.

So here are the details!!  Every week you folks can vote for one of five different experiments; the one with the most votes wins and I will complete it at week's end. I'll post a video of the myself attempting the most popular experiment each week, and give you five new experiments to vote on, and on and on it goes until the project gets really weird.

The voting ends each week at 9pm Friday night, and please place your votes in the comments section of my blog, www.ineedtostopsoon.com , or e-mail them to me at marc@ineedtostopsoon.com .

Your votes actually matter here (imagine that - votes that make a real difference)!!!

Projects to vote on this week:

1 | A Target Store | I'll decorate your car for the Holidays | VOTES: 3
Description: Tis' the Season!! I would walk around the parking lot of Target and offer to decorate peoples' cars for the holidays. I'd use that fake snow spray, tinsel, gaffers tape, candy canes, and more.

2 | A Los Angeles Subway Car | Group Portrait | VOTES: 2
Description: Organize a group portrait of everyone in the subway Car. This will be tricky.

3 | The Grove Mall | Reorganize Your Purse and Wallet Stand | VOTES: O
Description: I would offer ladies and gentleman the unique opportunity to have a complete stranger, me, reorganize their wallet or purse so it is more manageable and organized.

4 | LA Gun Range | Free Advice Stand | VOTES: O
Description: Set-up a stand and offer up free advice to anyone who wants it. I really wonder what this is going to be like?

5 | Rodeo Drive | Free Piggyback Rides | VOTES: 3
Description: Offer shoppers free piggyback rides at the famous Rodeo Drive shopping area - this is where all the stars and rich folks shop at stores like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Coach, etc.

Note: This project is currently based only in LA - if you have any LA places or ideas you'd like to suggest, please e-mail them to me at marc@ineedtostopsoon.com . Thanks!

I NEED TO STOP SOON IS NOW A PODCAST!

I've gone completely hi-tek - I'm now officially part of the 21st century - I have my own podcast!

It's easy to subscribe to, and once you do, you'll automatically get my new videos and rantings downloaded to your iTunes, News Feeder thing, MyYahoo RRS feed, etc. Then you can do whatever you want with em. Compile them all and send them to your friend in Idaho Falls - that's probably a real popular choice.

Mac - Here's how you subscribe on iTunes:

1) Open iTunes
2) Go to "advanced" in the top menu bar
3) Choose "subscribe to podcast"
4) A box will appear that says "url" - paste " http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarcHorowitz " into it (without the quotations).
5) that's it, you're on way to becoming an active member of the 21st century
6) pat yourself on the back

PC - Here's how you subscribe on My Yahoo:

1) make sure you have an account - if you don't it's easy to apply for one
2) go to www.ineedtostopsoon.com
3) click on the "podcast icon" below the national dinner tour logo
4) click on "My Yahoo" in the subscribe section
5) and off you go!!
6) pat yourself on the back

There are other ways to do this, but I'm not so privy to those yet.  This is a good way to get started.

Thanks and Be Well!

Marc”

Assignment: your project

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Week 15

Final Crit