pouët.net

it's really too bad the picture/sound quality is crap :/

true, but it isn't that spectacular anyway :)...
for more highres pics just go on processing.org or better reas.com

cool stuff

frodo@cool@sry.

Cool stuff. Is it real time?

xrl: watch the presentation, he refers to that.

I read about parallel universes. I like everything about parallel universe, quantum mechanics and that shit (even the heretic movie what the bleep we know). Before yesterday Strange-Egnarts was released. Strange-Egnarts is the best greek magazine on the paranormal and UFO and stuff. I really like it. Other magazines are a bit heretic, having too much adds about religious matters and communities, I don't like the sprite. But strange has the spirit of "We are children, we like the unknown, we are alternative, we are co-travellers, our own children, etc, etc", it's different. Ok, people say that it's all crap just like the rest of paranormal stuff but I don't care. I am not taking it seriously (How could I? I was never there in the first place to see a UFO, an alien, a ghost or anything else with my eyes), it just helps me escape from reality. Anyways, this issue of strange has great articles about 1) parallel universes (the multiverse), 2) parallel universes (more), 3) some scientists are trying to stop CERN from making an experiment that might create a small black hole that grows bigger and eats earth and the universe, 4) more strange stuff.

ROCKS

Just so you know.

heh, i know, it's kind of boring stuff compared to what the demo scene has to offer. but i'm currently just searching around what people do with the parallel universe of digital space... here, people tend to live in there (me too atm), just trying everything humanly possible to find the strangest constallations, doing weird trips, exploring their brains excessively... on the other side, the more offical artists pretend to be exactly the opposite. they reduce the content of their actual work to a minimum and increase the "social overhead" around it to an extreme... it's just another approch to the same thing. actually, clean code artists do the exact same thing as people here do - experiment with the machine... imo they want to hide from reality too in some way, try to change it and to do crazy/beautiful/extraordinary things with the new tools and so on. but the main difference is thier attitude. they base all on tradition, on the work of others by conneting to other well-known artists, philosophies, accepted artsy styles or completly different fields like architecture or biology or natural science in general... just posted it that one can form an opinion on the other end of the species of freestyle coders (programmers without any real purpose :) )

some other hotspots of useless software

design / sci
http://www.potatoland.org/
http://www.re-move.org/
http://www.bitforms.com/
http://www.generatorx.no/
http://www.sanchtv.com/
http://www.processing.org/
http://dataisnature.com/

games
http://tale-of-tales.com/blog/?page_id=19
http://www.pixelsurgeon.com/interviews/interview.php?id=239
http://www.kokoromi.org/
http://www.cactus-soft.co.nr/
http://www.untitled-game.org/

audio
http://toplap.org/index.php/ManifestoDraft
http://livecode.access-space.org/
http://www.essl.at/

net
http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/
http://sod.jodi.org/
http://www.neural.it/

performance
http://www.flong.com/

literal code
http://www.runme.org/
http://www.m-cult.org/read_me/
http://www.generative.net/

generatorx has some quite cool stuff

hehe jodi was a cute concept 5 years ago, now its abit passè, the project is probably dead by now even, no?

I was perusing jodi's creations back in 1999

(not to boast, just that the 5 years estimate is kinda off ;)

hmmm.. thinking back, i think i heard of it probably in early 2000 yes.. probably either by you or the falsch release catalogue. and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netochka_Nezvanova ofcourse :D

yeah of course ;) Netochka Nezvanova ftw!

(sorry for the delay)
yea, i like jodi too. and their glitch... cool that your where even there when it was fresh! ...i was not. it is really not that new, but i think it's still relevant, especially now as the internet has gotten that mainstream... yea, and untilted-game is cool :)
however, i don't know if this is either interesting for me or for you. all that code art stuff is kind of strange... i know. it has no clear background, no purpose outside art, nor will it be understood by most people without any clue about tech/art concepts.

the demo scene does definitifly not 'software art' in the artsy sense...
here, a good summary on that stuff...
Ten Theses about Software Art
Zehn Thesen zur Softwarekunst

but what is demomaking really about? can demos truly be understood by everyone? is it just about cool effects? and if so, why don't you just make movies then?
for me:

the code is the core of a demo

demos are not about images, sound, models, framing, shaders, music, lighting, transitions... in first place!
so, what makes code that special as a tool? you can get all the effects without any effort simply in a wysiwyg editor. werkzeug has been completed i think, so all coders should stop now working?

and by the way:
recently i realized that all these "problems" are mainly only "problems" in a visual context. painting, sculpture, cinema even theatre or performance...
in music there was never such a conflict. computers were the logical consequence of a long ever winding history. composition and the execution with an orchester. the composer was seperated from the interpretation long ago. like an architect. - and like the architect or engineer he had the tool of an artificial language in his hands. so music had scientific aspects - the formalized language - even centuries ago. so all modern movements like serialism and after that electronic music with all its new instruments had been easily integrated into a longer tradition...
as far as i know - there was no comparable movement in the visual fields. artefacts like beflix (neq) are just experiments of scientists with new scientific tools... so most of the early computer art can be seen as a complete discontinuity in history.
the only way to see a straight line of organic evolution is 'concept art'. fluxus, possibly dada... the result: software art :/
but the connections are weak, too weak to catch highend computing...

Indeed.. Music has been specified via code since a number of centuries now.

It's also probably because music for a long time was the most accessible way to have an effect to your surroundings. (except by burning them ;)) .. Our only possibility for large scale intervention.

On the other hand our visuals were mostly constrained by first, our human ability to interpret them or via machines / sets that we couldn't animate for a long time in real time.

(by machines I'm referring to the machines used in theatre to move sets around, or make actors appear from the sky etc.. deus ex machina devices)

0rel you think too much, you are clearly good guy. btw. do you know what is definition of a outsider art ? i think demoscene is outsider art of the "real digital art"

outsider art is a raw vision without any formal art education which some people are able to reach. well there are examples which everybody can think.

1- code has the ability to record aesthetical choices.. it can almost play like a documentation to the work as well as its primary mean of production.

2- code free(s) us from our limitation of time and space. The most naïve example is that you can express an infinite number of objects which you "could not" do in a tool, unless that tool contains coding-like operators.

3- the question might rather be: why *realtime* code?

3.1- I would say, as a limitation: it's interesting to play with the boundary, to imagine things that could be done in realtime, but you're not sure.

3.2- As a way to get immediate feedback: nothing's better for creation than such capability

3.3- As an heroic gesture: to put oneself at risk of a bug ruining the show

3.4- For compactedness: as a way to make distribution affordable

Then on the other hand you have people who consider demos not a medium, rather a fixed form, a look, a way of doing things: a number of fixed choices.

I could try listing them, the clichés of demomaking:

- presence of credits
- presence of greetings
- about 4-5 minutes long
- plays on the first impression, tries to impress
- abstract
- disorienting
- attempt to climax
- lack of discourse or commentary on the outside world: self-centered (boasting/self-depracating etc..)
- as to be made by a group
- not interactive
- audio and visuals.
- generally non-narrative.
- references previous works by other people: heavy reuse and improvement of already made effects or scenes.
- reoccurrence of: tunnels, spike balls, etc.. codes related to an era.

etc..

unseen: yes, it is underground... but it is still the most authentic digital artform i know. art must never be artificial for me, or it will loose it's power instantly... art shouldn't be intentional or mainly socially motivated... it must be free. all the more conceptual, explicitly artsy stuff - like the things reas makes - doesn't look real to me. i don't know, but i think it's boring and just a clean and more accepted way to play with the digitial toys...

neq: thanks for your thoughts... it is crucial to find out more about what makes code that interesting, and how to use in a distinctive way...

and code can even do choices itself at runtime! you all know that problem... bugs! even in small projects and especially when they get more complex suddenly some strange behaviour shows up, all starts to behave irrational... the machine is different than the canvas! the machine makes decisions by itself... the coder defines only the boundaries of the concrete decision making of the machine... these are decisions of higher order, at least secondary order to be precise, because code is (mostly) never equal to the thing you get at runtime. a painter chooses a color and a position on the canvas - and what he gets is a stroke on that exact position with that exact color he mixed up. the decision is direct, first order.

the coder can do almost the same thing, even with more precision, but he has to describe the process rather than to execute it himself. so his decisions are all at least of secondary order. he decides how the instructions have to be not the actions. but this is only the most simplest case of a higher order decision making... size coding proves that it is possible to distill codes for very complex outputs by choosing extremely few instructions.
but size coding isn't that good for demonstrate the strengths of REALTIME code because the output - as in the majority of all demos - is completely deterministic, and always the same. here, code isn't very different from a recording and compressing, right, it stores just a linear stream of operations... now the final question comes up: what is the art of higher order decision making IN REALTIME? ;)

the coder creates a decision machine which creates all the output for him... automation. he describes all the behaviour in general way and gets an infinite amount of decisions by the machine. i think that's the main source of joy while doing demos. you say something and get it instantly ...something happens there, especially when you are combining and tuning the effects in realtime interactively...
in my opinion, here the coder as a creator suddenly turns into a viewer. it's like sitting in chair and instruct some people to do some things... like actors. different from the first order creator (e.g. a sculptor) you change the setting only by instructions not by actions. you set things in motion rather than move them by yourself. so the creater becomes HYBRID. he is a viewer and a creator in one person. - and now things get even more complicated when the creator can interactively change things in the scene... now he can describe/create (instruct), view (perceive) and even change the scene by primary decisions (interact) ...

to come back to the music analogy from above:
in the creation of classical music there are three clearly separated positions involved:

1. the composer
2. the interpret
3. the auditor

the composer uses the formalized language,
the interpret(s) use(s) their instruments and
the audience uses their body/mind...

from that perspective the creation process of artistic content is directly comparable to what happens with realtime software!

so, what i'm asking myself for quite a while now: is it possible to give someone else all the three roles at the same time? is it possible to give someone the role of a creator/composer and letting him play the instrument at the same time as he looks at "his work" as a viewer... is it possible to create OPEN realtime software?
games show that it is possible.
editors show that it is possible.
players show that it is possible.
demos show that it is possible.

...but the real conclusion - the hybrid FORMAT- didn't come up yet...
a format which works like an music album but with interactive content. distributable over the net. created by artists or small bands, not companies.


here, people are very dedicated, very skilled and motivated. i really vote for extended demo!
here, people could very easily adapt their code to open up the programs. it's not that far away...
why not try to give someone else control over the effects, the output stream, instead of always focus on the resolution and polycount to keep up with nextgen game graphics?
why not make something new?

Am I too obvious, if I say demo don't need to have any of those! Can it be still called demo ? Or what...