Twitter bot

This is more practical thinking towards the final outcome.

Just scan through this blog about "Using Google Spreadsheets for a generated text Twitter bot". Wanna test it and think about how bot and live text can be emerged together.

http://www.zachwhalen.net/blog/13/nov/using-google-spreadsheets-generated-text-twitter-bot

aesthetics design class - lecture 3

This is more re-use some of the quotes from a undergraduate class that taught by Geoff Cox (my supervisor). The topic is generative art.

- Digital poem and Dadaist poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBS-9Tm7EmQ
> from the instruction of making a dadaist poem, there is a line "shake it gently"-> relate to the random function in software programming

- "Philip Galanter describes generative art as "any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to, or resulting in, a completed work of art""  (see ref: http://www.hyperrhiz.net/hyperrhiz06/essays/the-aesthetics-of-generative-literature-lessons-from-a-digital-writing-workshop.html)

- The notion to support generative art as the combination of human and nonhuman: "Generative art is a term given to work usually (although not exclusively) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which the artwork is executed. After the initial parameters have been set by an artist / programmer the process of production is unsupervised, and, as such, 'self-organising' and 'time-based'. Work literally 'grows' autonomously, according to the innate properties of the chosen technology or the particular circumstances in which the instructions are carried out. The outcome of this process of 'complexity' is thus unpredictable, and could be described as being integral to the 'nature' of that technology, or situation, rather than simply the product of individual human agency or authorship. " / "Generator serves to throw emphasis on processes, unfolding in real-time, rather than end products or the dead-end commodity form of art. " (see ref: http://generative.net/generator/) 

-Sol Lewitt: “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art”

DNA and computational generativity

coding sequences and non coding sequences
Rules
Software / data process
Translating
Transcription
self replication
enzyme based
begin with one cell,
magnificent machine -> human body

see the programming of life here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00vBqYDBW5s

Recursive

About recursion:

"What is recursion? Sometimes a problem is too difficult or too complex to solve because it is too big. If the problem can be broken down into smaller versions of itself, we may be able to find a way to solve one of these smaller versions and then be able to build up to a solution to the entire problem.

This is the idea behind recursion; recursive algorithms break down a problem into smaller pieces which you either already know the answer to, or can solve by applying the same algorithm to each piece, and then combining the results.
 
Stated more concisely, a recursive definition is defined in terms of itself. Recursion is a computer programming technique involving the use of a procedure, subroutine, function, or algorithm that calls itself in a step having a termination condition so that successive repetitions are processed up to the critical step where the condition is met at which time the rest of each repetition is processed from the last one called to the first."

Ref: http://www.sparknotes.com/cs/recursion/whatisrecursion/section1.rhtml

Images example:

 

Video introduction:

)
Images ref:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/32873/Recursion-made-simple
http://memristors.memristics.com/MorphoProgramming/Morphogrammatic%20Programming.html

Function and meaning

In the book "What Things Do", the author, Verbeek, talks about mediation of technology, in particular the function and sign of technology.

For example: "a speed bump not only functions to slow down traffic, it mediates the relation of users of the road and the space around it, signifying that space as a pedestrian terrain through making it safe."

As such, function and sign can be analyzed separately. This 'sign' is actually corresponding to Latour's Actor Network theory of 'delegation'. What has been inscribed in the technology? What are the meaning or desire?

I am thinking about in the art world, the artifact, such as JODI's work GeoGoo, other than visually presented as performing objects, what has been inscribed in the work if we think about the use of icons and maps in the work, there is a critical element inside the work. Can we describe this as a sign or as latour's term "delegation" ? Technology is used as a way to critique the network.  This strategy is commonly used in network art, for example Benjamin's artwork Facebook dematricator. 

To move the notion of signs to generativity/liveness, how might be understand liveness through signs? What the code does is not just performing an action from its functional perspective, but more performing a critique of culture/technology or translating a specific meaning through the artwork performance. This requires us to look at the materials, how the artists use the materials for example likes/google map icons etc to delegate their desire and inscribe into the artwork. In that sense, we have to look into the materials of an artwork. What it means by performing live? Why is it so important to perform as live? What is the aesthetics of liveness when we think from the materials aspect of an artwork?

Perhaps it demonstrates the dynamics and unpredictability of artwork/network.

From Bucher (2012), she mentions her methodological approach towards her thesis. "I adopt the view that technical objects and elements afford meanings and possibilities for action, based on how they work and function. My methods are therefore influenced by approaches to media that explicate the need to read and interpret technology based on its materiality and procedurality." (p.73)

Can I also use the similar approach to understand why it has to be performed as live? To relate to generativity, shall we look at the rules that the author defines?

The aesthetics of liveness

Ref: http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/daniel.and.kate/webcams.html (by Daniel Palmer 2000)

The introduction paragraph of Palmer describes the situation of liveness, the setup of liveness.

The idea is simple: a video camera takes pictures at set intervals, the images are digitally compressed and instantly uploaded to an Internet server, where they become immediately available to anyone surfing the World Wide Web.Set up by a minority of dedicated netizens, the still images are usually transmitted around the clock, delayed only by the time it takes them to unveil on the screen. "

The notion of liveness that is described here is not related to audience, but more about reality and real time technology. The actual transmission of data that is happened around in the city. (This relates to social/society as all the artworks represented in the web were about real situation) - see quote here " the visible world is periodically disclosed" That possibly I call the representation of the society as reality. However, reality can be also thought of nonhumans, computation is constantly reacting, encoding, decoding and transmitting the data.

The reality is constantly shifting as the (networked) environment is never stable.

-> side note: may be the liveness that I am looking has a subtle layer of surveillance notion, 'monitoring' the network happening at some sense. See Palmer quote here "Watching 'real' people live out their lives in public is increasingly sparking our televisual imaginations"

" there's often only the very faint sense that something might happen"-> the possibility.. or unpredictability? This resonates with earlier liveness literature review that I have done. 

Link with mediation:  "Webcams aren't a medium but a hybrid, a remediation of video by the metamedium of the networked computer "

Possible venue for artwork presentation

1/ Data Salon series at CA : http://easternbloc.ca/calls.php [Apr or Jun 2014]
2/ I Do Art Lab: https://www.facebook.com/idoartlab [Before Aug, ideally in Jun 2014] > but will be in the form of visual objects.
3/ Writing Machine Collective HK: https://www.facebook.com/events/1396547637292652/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular [Deadline: 23 May; exhibition: Oct 2014]

generative aesthetics in relation to computation

Ref: http://www.digicult.it/digimag/issue-050/aesthetics-and-computation-the-origins-of-generative-art/

John F. Simon Jr – Every_Icon is a very famous work to describe generative aesthetics. 
"Simon searches for aesthetic aims systematically and in real-time computation" 

The article mentions artist Lisa Jevbratt, and her works were often driven by Internet data.

Next is to read this: Christiane Paul wrote about database, visualization and data mapping (2003) >> refer to this: Christiane Paul, Digital Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003)

liveness and generative aesthetics

"Liveness is the absence of writing. It is encoding and decoding happening simultaneously. Another attribute of liveness is difference. One could see the same play with the same cast three nights in a row and see a different show each time. Unlike recorded or written work which contains the same words or images each time one looks at it, liveness offers a unique presentation each time."

It is this uniqueness gives the result of difference. But in a lot of generative art, it shows the same result, because the rules are the same. Of course, there is randomness there to present uniquely every time. It is purely computation (is it?)  that generate such kind of every-time difference. But if we add another 'social data layer', this makes it a co-joint experience of humans and nonhumans. It is due to the network that makes such kind of things possible. Not only the network of human participation, but network of algorithms across spatial dimensions. For example, the artwork gets the online data from Twitter. The algorithm of twitter returns different data according to time (when you retrieve), place (where you retrieve) and your own past behaviour  (such as cookies and the notion of complex tracking).

This line seems need more rethinking: "it is rather to justify liveness as a mode of mediation as in many respects it is the lack of mediation that is being displaced by new and creative ways to mediate all forms of communication."

"but allowed them to see and/or hear entertainment across great distances as the events were happening."   -> in relation to network happening. 

liveness is tied to notions of "authenticity" -> what is authenticity in the network?

http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Liveness

Generativity / Performativity / Livness

My SV asked me about the intersection of the captioned words. I think it is really a good question to ask why liveness that is central to my research but not others.

By opening up this blog specifically, I am exploring the relationship between generativity and liveness. The possible theoretical outcome would be: There are some limitation of the term 'generativity' which I think it is not enough. That's why I have such blog to research what is generativity. Either add the notion of live into generativity or generativity is part of liveness.

The other issues is the field that I am targeting. The terms generativity and performativity is widely used in software studies. People tend to grasp what is that means. However, liveness is a term usually used in media performance or performing art. This makes the term difficult to draw connections with audiences. Though the term live coding comes to play in recent years, but it is obvious that means a combination of performance and software coding. That seems make a lot of sense to use the term 'liveness' as the essence of liveness to live coding is the presence of the artist to perform in front of audiences. Again, this is more focusing on the audiences.

I need to rethink the essence of liveness, live data, and possibly that notion of live is related to society. The dynamics of 'living life'  (This likely come from the reading I read yesterday in Art Inquiry - 2012, see reference here: http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=736f8cef-3d00-4c15-a321-291695774d29&articleId=655b0f4a-99b0-47d6-a8e6-f922013f4cde) Perhaps is that kind of dimension, correspond to our living life, that makes me so fascinated with those data driven media artworks. (for example vending machine, listening post...) Perhaps, this gives me a direction to look for what is means by network. What is network and how does it related to living?

Another point that I relate is Nick Couldry who talks about liveness is ideologies, representing culture and realities..

I need to identify the characteristics of liveness in network art, such that I can say generativity constituted liveness. Or is that straight forward?

What is generative art? by Margaret and Ernest

to be read- http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/eae/intart/pdfs/generative-art.pdf

more from a science perspective - 

- some history indicates where the term come from (since 1965)
- p.5: "rule-driven systems appear to have a greater degree of autonomy, relative to the conscious decisions of the human artist."
- in relation to sol LeWitt, p.11: " the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt was also recommending G-art when he said that art should be designed by some formulaic rule. The crucial idea, he said, "becomes a machine that makes the art."where "all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair"(1967:824) " > but the issue of Sol LeWitt tends to treat as a completed object, where I am focused on a continuous process.

... to be continued

software/generative art - Thanks Pauline de Souza

   "Software art is not art that has been created with the help of a computer but art
     that happens in the computer. Software is not programmed by artists, in order to
     produce autonomous artwork, but the software itself is the artwork. What is crucial
     here is not the result but the process triggered in the computer by the programme
     code" (Baumgertel, 23:2001)."

    "Software art describes an artistic activity which in the material of software allows
     for a critical reflection of software. Software art does not regard software merely
     as a pragmatic, invisible tool generating certain visible surfaces, but software art
     focuses on pragmatic codes (algorithms) itself even if this code [has not] been
     open in the foreground". (Arns, 184-5: 2004).

latest change by Philip:
   “Generative art refers to any art practice where the artists concedes control to a
     system that operates with a degree of relative autonomy and contributes to or
     results in a completed work of art. Systems may include natural language
     instructions, biological, self-organising materials, mathematical operations and
     other procedural inventions.” (Galanter, 4: 2006).

"generative systems does not have to negate intentionality, but is a balancing of randomness and control." (www.netzlierarut.net/) .

This comes close to my area (the entanglement of data, network and software)
"Matthew Fuller would describe Amy Alexander’s Olly as ‘speculative software’. He argues “speculative software explores the potentially of all possible programming. It creates transversal connections between data,machine and networks” (Fuller, 11: 2006). "

Ref: https://www.academia.edu/346926/Rethinking_the_Dissension_Between_Software_and_Generative_Art

Artworks about generativity

continue to update-

2/ A Live Portrait of Tim Berners Lee by Thomson and Craighead

1/ Listening Post: real time data responsive environment

Generativity

"Generativity in essence describes a self-contained system from which its user draws an independent ability to create, generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input from the system's original creators."

 "Technological generativity generally describes the quality of the Internet and modern computers that allows people unrelated to the creation and operation of either to produce content in the form of applications and in the case of the Internet, blogs."

"The term "generativity" was coined by the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950 to denote "a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation.""

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generativity

Generative and liveness

I am interested in the dynamics of network and what I call 'network happening. Again, to me liveness exist through the entanglement of data, software and network.

The reason why I dig into the notion of generative aesthetics is because I have some assumptions.

1/ The idea of generative art (system base) comes from rules that are defined through algorithms
2/ The rules can be something simple like turn 80 degree when you meet x, or upon certain requirement meets, polling or getting data from somewhere, here the network.
3/ By entering the data relation, the complexity of generativity increased because there are additional agents, here the network and humans.
5/ The notion of generative aesthetics include two parts: traditional idea of generative aesthetics + user generated content, the action of content generation through data flow i.e entering into the database and retrieving from there through different interfaces. Here i am not interested in the "content", that is the meaning of the data from a linguistic perspective
6/ The complexity is unpredictable and is partially subject to network happening. There is no end result.

Reading What is Generative Art by Philip Galanter

Paper download here: http://philipgalanter.com/downloads/ga2003_paper.pdf

" Generative art may or may not be “high tech”. Third, a system that moves an art practice into the realm of generative art must be well defined and self-contained enough to operate autonomously" (p.4)

"Complex systems often include chaotic behavior, which is to say that the dynamics of these systems are nonlinear and difficult to predict over time, even while the systems themselves are deterministic machines following a strict sequence of cause and effect." (p.6) In generative art, it is not random.

"nonsense sentence sent through the channel"- from information theory.

reflection on my terms 'generative'

- start from simple rules
- rules are repeatedly execute
- result is unpredictable and dynamics
- work is never complete (when generative collides with the internet data)
- with some degree of autonomy (reference from here: Philip Galanter, 2003"What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory". «http://philipgalanter.com/downloads/ga2003_paper.pdf» )
- Marius Watz adds that such systems often "employ dynamic rather than deterministic processes, and are created by an artist but rarely completely under her control" I would rather say the process is not fully under control. The notion of çontrol is a way to explore the generative aesthetics.
- the use of system is required (reference from Philip Galanter)

Generative aesthetics 3

"Participative and generative aesthetics-

In the early phase of computer art the work produced referred to methods of order and to syntactic analyses of parameters like repetition, combination and variations."

The author actually mentions about generative aesthetics in relation to processes and procedures.

ref: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/aesthetics_of_the_digital/cybernetic_aesthetics/12/

Another definition - generative art

"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." - Philip Galanter

"Another definition of generative art is work that is derived from a process or processes, often but not strictly by the use of a computer, to define rules by which such artwork are produced."
> from this I think of sol lewitt's works. 

"generative art seem to generally agree that the term is at some level conceptually similar to algorithmic art, which is a term that has been around much longer. So have terms like fractal art and now, procedural art."


Ref: http://sfsthetik.com/2013/05/21/concepts-in-generative-art-and-computational-aesthetics/

Generative aesthetics 2

"complexity can arise from simplistic systems", quote from here: http://waybeyondhuman.blogspot.dk/2010/01/generative-aesthetics.html

I guess the author's notion of aesthetics is to examining the outcome of the form representation as a complex system. The form then perceived by audience and affect the experience of audiences. "we feel passive, even dumb; but we feel comfortable."

So one way of talking about generative aesthetics is from a representation/experience perspective. 

Assignment Text worms example

http://www.cs.middlebury.edu/~candrews/classes/genart/assignment9.html

This is an assignment in Middlebury University. It describes very simple example, text worm, with 5 simple rules set out and how the output can be made unpredictably.

This piece is getting close to how I think about generative aesthetics, develop from simple rules, and repeatedly execute and run to produce a kind of dynamics and complex pattern. 

Generative Art

"Generative art, a technique where the artist creates print or onscreen images by using computer algorithms, finds the artistic intersection of programming, computer graphics, and individual expression."

See the book here: http://www.manning.com/pearson/  and examples here:http://abandonedart.org/

It is another definition of generative art, though it mentions about algorithms, but it seems not quite exactly my thing yet.

Generative aesthetics

As part of my PhD study, I would like to investigate the notion of 'generative aesthetics' in Network Art.

In 2000, Geoff Cox, Alex McLean and Adrian Ward had written an essay about The aesthetics of generative code. The major argument was "like poetry, the aesthetic value of code lies in its execution, not simply its written form". They compare code to language poetry. Another line is worth reading: "generative code has poetic qualities, as it does not operate in a single moment in time and space but as a series of consecutive 'actions' that are repeatable, the outcome of which might be imagined in different contexts." Due to the unique nature of code, once rules (simple and repeated rules) are setup and it can turn into a complex scenario which is unpredictable.

Then later in 2005, they have a follow up article call "coding praxis: reconsidering the aesthetics of code". This time, they are more focus on the performativity of code "code as per-formative: that which both performs and is performed". But again, it is also very comparable to language, such as this line " Code is only really understandable within the context of its overall structure — which is what makes it like a language (be it source code or machine code, or even raw bytes". On the other side, they also address the potentiality of code structure, see here: "The Operating System defines potential activities via APIs, the hardware defines potential functions via machine code, and yet these are implicit and mostly unseen. The performance is thus the result of many components, from a wide range of sources, interacting dynamically" (p.164) To a certain point, they address the notion of liveness here, " Many of the components are predetermined, but through the combinations of interactions combined with the dynamism and unpredictability of live action, the result is far from fixed as a whole." (p.164) There are two points here, one is the dynamism which allow interactions take place among components, not the code itself, but through the interaction with other interfaces. The second point is the unpredictability because you never know what will happen next or through the interactions. This is not only applicable to web API, but also calling for internal libraries/modules e.g system.os in python. They further discuss the notion of unpredictability using this line "‘generative’; that is always in progress, and on execution produces unpredictable and contradictory out- comes. It is in a continuous state of ‘becoming’ (to use Henri Bergson’s phrase)" (p. 167) Another interesting thing that talks about in the article (well i think it is not only limited to generative code, but a general program instead) "Code requires speculation" (p.169). They use the example of variable to talk about its function. Programmer need to fully aware how the variable to be named, to be used not only in the sub function, but how to pass from one to another, or to modify from one function to another and it requires "speculation".

However, one the major issues that I found is that there is no special attention to the notion of 'generative' which I think the important is 'rules'.

Next, I will look for research/art reference into this.