Generative Content Creation - Post 3

For the third assignment in Generative Content Creation, we looked at numerous examples of generative art. It was really amazing to see, what these artists have come up with. Generally simple ideas have been merged with other ideas in unpredictable ways and then could be manipulated again by the viewer.

The assignment involved applying the concepts and theories learned in previous posts on real generative art examples.

With the first assignment we looked into the field of multimedia and new media. Manovich (2001) brought out some good statements and observations in his article. The most intriguing for me was the part where he described how everything is being transformed into computer-mediated form. Every piece of information found on the Internet, be it images, videos, podcasts, music, text or animation, everything consists of ones and zeros. Therefore it could be easily manipulated and as a result made to something different.

The second assignment had us reading articles about generative art, to understand this term better and to get an overview of the background and theories of this type of art. According to Galanter (2003) generative art refers to 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.

Although the system, which is used in the creation of generative art could be anything from natural language rules, a machine or other procedural invention, I guess the main emphasis at least in the light of this course is the computers involvement. As I described previously, all the information in the computers really consists of small particles and these of smaller particles etc, which could be manipulated, changed and altered in many different ways. If the systems and programs are created which use this data to create something new, attractive and interesting, then generative art is created.

Some interesting examples of generative art practices:

Jörg Pininger is a musician, poet and media artist. The application he created for iPhone is a mix of all of his talents. As described on his website the app "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" is a sound toy, a performance tool and an art work in its own right. "You can play with the letter-creatures and watch and listen how they interact with each other or use them to produce soundscapes like you would with an electronic musical instrument. "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" blends art, biology, fun and physics to create a unique, dynamic and interactive sound ecology" (joerg.piniger.net).

Pininger's application is a good example of generative art, as it has all the characteristics of generative art, complex systems and allows manipulation by the user. The user can choose how to interact with the application. Each order gives a feedback and results in new sound or visual pattern on the display. The sounds can be formed into generative music and the lines, created by the flying letter, could form a digital painting.

This is an iPhone application made to imitate the creation of Jackson Pollocks paintings. Jackson Pollock was mentioned in several articles which discussed the meaning of generative art. Galanter argued, whether Pollock could be called a generative artist or not, as his techniques of painting were rather random that systematized.

http://www.bestiario.org/research/flow/

This application represents the chronology of tagging process on wikipedia articles Santiago Ortiz and his team have been selecting for their research. This application uses the data available in the Internet and combines it into a visually attractive and informative systematic form. By moving the arrow over the graph, each sector lights up and the information about this research topic could be seen.

The second example from Ortiz also uses the data from the Internet. It is a tridimensional scheme, which represents the strength of relations between cities from searches on google. The user can turn the globe and look at the different cities, their coordinates and the results from Google. The methodology of the generation process is described as well.

http://bestiario.org/research/citydistances/

To conclude, the topic of generative media was new for me. It was interesting to see how the art, technology and information connect to each other and create amazing artwork. Some of the artworks and their intentions still remained a little vague for me but probably it takes time and practice to understand this topic a little better.

Galanter, Philip. 2003. What is generative art? Complexity theory as a context for art theory. In In GA2003–6th Generative Art Conference http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2003/a22.pdf.

Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New Media. Massassuchets: MIT Press. http://www.manovich.net/LNM/Manovich.pdf

Task 14 - New Interactive Environments

What is it you are going to take with you from this course, be it negative or positive experience, content-related or organisational aspects and so on? Write down your experiences, observations, reflections on your Weblog.

What I did gain from this course were some good articles to use for other courses, the concept of activity theory, I got to know about PLENK course and MOOCs in general and Flashmeeting application. So actually some interactive environments.

In general I was not satisfied with the organization of the course. It seemed like there were a lot of demands from the lecturers side but not so much effort spent. It felt like we were just given tasks just because something had to be given. The whole concept was vague and to admit it, did not motivate to give a 100% from my side either.

I would make some recommendations for the next year:

• The concept of the course should be really thought through and argumented
• The timeframe and expected results should be specified
• If it is not possible to give all the tasks at once, there should be a certain time when the students can expect the new tasks
• If the course starts in the middle of the semester and most of the students are from IMKE, it is not a very good idea to spend so much time on defining the term "interactivity" as it has been done in almost all the courses so far.
• It is useful to provide some new interesting knowledge regarding the topics of the course, even if they are not part of the tasks, they may be interesting to investigate by the students
• Maybe there could be some interactive environments tested and reviewed by the students, which would make the tasks more practical

Things that I liked:

• The assessment process was clear and easily followable
• The reflections of the tasks by Terje
• The task of comparing Plenk10 and NIE course
• The different tools used in the process of the course as some of them were new to me

Task 13 - New Interactive Environments

Describe your activity and explain how would you redesign it, re-instrumentalise it and re-organised it to be more efficient, enjoyable, etc.

The activity that I am analyzing is workout. Working out has become an activity of itself, not a necessity for getting things done, but rather a thing we have to do to stay healthy and fit. Computers have helped in a sense that it is now possible to monitor the efficiency of our workout, to calculate calories, distance heart rate etc. It is a kind of motivator. In the other hand, computers are the reasons people are not moving naturally as much as they had to before these technological developments.

But how can digital technology help people be fit and at the same time make up for its guilt of turning people into office-slaves? One thing that I thought about was how technology can help to gain more from people, who are spending their time and energy working out. For example, people are going to gyms, spending hours in a week on exercise machines, spending energy and letting it all go to waste. But all this work could actually do something more than just burn fat or build muscle. The energy which is created on the exercise machine could be collected and used for example for the gym's lighting. Fortunately there are more and more gyms, which are starting to use the energy from exercise machines and therefore saving up from their electricity bills. This is one example but there should be much much more.

Because if to think about it, the gyms are not a necessity for people. It is possible to jog or lift weights or dance in a group everywhere. Instead, people spend money to go to one room with many people to sweat and suffer together. At least in the earlier days, this meant that something would come out of the sweating and suffering, such as a building for example :) Physical work was done for some purpose.

Digital technology together with science could take more advantage of people just jogging around or going to group exercises, dancing or boxing. There should be some kind of energy collectors used on the hands and feet of the people in action. Every movement could be transformed into energy and from there to electricity. Then why not go together to the gym and do good for the Earth. This is something to think about to the scientists and technology developers. It should not be very difficult I guess.

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 11

Analyse both free software and open source approach in your blog. If you prefer one, provide your arguments.

Free software is a kind of software, which can be used, copied, modified and shared for non-commercial purposes by anyone with no fees or purchases. Examples of free software that I have used are for example GIMP image editor and Openoffice text editor. These are quite quality software freely downloadable from the web. Both of them are also open source softwares.

Open source software is a software, which has an open source code for everyone to see. It enables to study the code and find out, how does the coding work in the specific software. But for that you have to be a pretty good programmer I guess. But still if you can see the code, copy and alter it as you wish, it is kind of similar to free software, with some limitations - you are not able to modify the original.

The difference between the two software versions still remains a little confusing to me. Probably it is more of a question of ethics. Free software is a kind of way of thinking while open source is waiting for some income. I would not know which software to choose, as I don't know programming and can't read code very well, therefore I could not modify the code anyway.

Introduction and Foundation of New Media - Essay reviews

In this post, I am going to review and comment three essays, written by Mehrnoosh, Kersti and Valeria.

Mehrnoosh wrote an interesting essay about image tagging and retrieval, comparing folksonomy and controlled vocabulary. She described different researches about how people retrieve images from the Internet. There was some interesting food for thought for me in that essay. For example that unlike for texts, while retrieving images, people do not focus much on the authority of the image but rather on the fact, that the image represents what they want. Another interesting thought was that often the searchers have a well-defined mental image of a potentially satisfying picture already in their mind. I found some recognition in those thoughts.

She went on by describing folksonomy, or in this context image tagging by the users opposed to controlled vocabularies. Mehrnoosh brought out the advantages and disadvantages of folksonomy in the image retrieval process. I liked that she had found quite a lot studies about the topic to back up the arguments of the both sides. The last paragraph brought out an example of the National Archive of UK and their plan to add their digital collection to Flickr. I liked that example in the end and maybe I would suggest to use more examples like it in the rest of the text as well, just to illustrate the essay.

Kersti's essay was about digital ecosystem and whether it is a fertile metaphor or the new type of ecosystem that uses ecological principles. She focused on the notions associated with the terms of "digital", "ecosystem", "new media" and "metaphor". She brought out a lot of interesting tangible examples to illustrate the essay. The way Kersti went through all the related terms and devoted a paragraph for each matter gave an overview of the thoughts in her mind about the topic. Although some of the arguments remained a bit confusing. For example equalling the term "digital" with "online" - this should maybe have been explained a little more.

Kersti's writing style for this essay was kind of philosophical and at the same time had a personal touch, which made it easy to read. In order to back up her arguments a little better, she should have used more references and citations in the text.

Valeria wrote her essay about online memes. I like the way Valeria can connect the topics of her every post to a lot of other examples from different fields. If to look at the first part of her essay, she starts with examples of Mona Lisa and some from Japanese culture. But all the examples work in the context of her essay.

Valeria's essay is very well structured and each chapter of the essay describes content relevant to the explanation of online memes and their phenomenon. There are many references made from different researchers and web sites, which gives her arguments a good backup. There aren't many suggestions to make for Valeria as I found the essay good, comprehensive and summarizing.

Generative Content Creation - Post 2

This post concentrates on the topic of generative art. The term generative art was confusing to me at first, but after reading Galanter's (2003) article I got a more clear idea of generative art

Galanter gives a definition to the term of generative art:

"Generative art refers to 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." (Galanter, 2003).

Five years later Galanter improved his definition a little but basically the core meaning remains:

"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist cedes 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 or chemical processes, computer programs, machines, self-organizing materials, mathematical operations, and other procedural inventions." (Galanter, 2008).

In Galanter's article "What is generative art" he describes the activities, which are a part of todays contemporary generative art. These are for example electronic music, computer graphics and animation, industrial design and architecture. All of these activities use computer systems to create a complete work of art. Galanter believes the systems to be the most important part of generative art. "The key element in generative art is then the system to which the artist cedes partial or total subsequent control," he says (2003).

The systems which can not be easily or not at all comprehended by the scientists, but which seem to have an order are called complex systems. Galanter describes complex systems like this:

"Complex systems typically have a large number of small parts or components that interact with similar nearby parts and components. These local interactions often lead to the system organizing itself without any master control or external agent being "in charge". Such systems are often referred to as being self-organizing."(Galanter, 2003).

Another systems Galanter analyzes are chaotic and random systems. He believes chaotic systems to be a part of complex systems. Galanter brings out examples such as weather, which is a complex system that is not very easily comprehendible, yet it is a system where each small particle is dependent on others and vice versa. Galanter strictly says that chaotic systems are not the same as random systems. The weather example proves it well.

Corcuff (2008) describes generative art a little differently and also brings the subjects of chance and unpredictability into the picture. So if to compare Galanter's and Corcuff's articles it gets kind of mixed up. If Galanter strictly demands the usage of systems in the generative art and Corcuff describes chance then they do not match completely. Galanter does not think that Jackson Pollock's works should be considered as generative, at the same time Corcuff mentions Pollock in her article. Therefore it can be assumed that she takes Pollock as a generative artist.

But if to look at Corcuff's article, what is chance in the concept of generative art. Is it actually a system or is it not? In one hand for example if the dice are used, it is still a system, the predictability can be calculated and possible results even if there are millions can be predicted. Or is the chance just so unpredictable and complex that it could be called chaotic?

In his article "What is Complexism?" Galanter (2008) describes the complexity theory which he believes to be the core component of generative art. Complexism in his words is a highly disordered system which seems chaotic. He suggests that complexism is the next step from modernism and postmodernism. He compared the three, explained their characteristics and differences.

It could be seen that complexism is a part of art evolution, which follows modernism and postmodernism. When the modernism involved a concrete system, the fixed way of doing things, authority and hierarchy, then postmodernism resented modernism and did completely the opposite. Complexism in the other hand is again another wave of difference. But it seems to have grown up a bit. Instead of total collapse, no truth and randomness, complexism in taking more into account the feedback, generative networks and co-evolution. Although the generation of art is seemingly chaotic, it still leaves an impression of higher meaning and goals.

As always, art represents the thoughts, dreams, desires and resistance of the creative elite of the particular era. In general, generative art could be considered as obscure or chaotic, meaningless even. But as I could understand, in this case, it is not only about the art piece itself but also the system, which was developed for making the art piece.

Corcuff, Marie-Pascale. 2008. Chance and generativity. In GA2008, 11th Generative Art Conference, 189-199. http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2008/16.pdf.

Galanter, Philip. 2003. What is generative art? Complexity theory as a context for art theory. In In GA2003–6th Generative Art Conference http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2003/a22.pdf.

Galanter, Philip. 2008. What is Complexism? Generative Art and the Cultures of Science and the Humanities. In GA2008, 11th Generative Art Conference, 151-167 http://www.generativeart.com/on/cic/papersGA2008/13.pdf.

Ethics and Law in New Media homework - Week 10

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015? Write a short (blogged) predictive analysis

In five years I believe is not going to be much change in the landscape of software licensing. There are always going to be people who want to earn money and others who are in favor of free sharing. I can not imagine that there will be a program, license system or some other way of controlling the software sharing, which would satisfy everyone.

Probably the software selling companies are trying to think of new more effective ways of protecting their software or maybe more strict rules are put on the sharing of software. At the same time, the network of people using, downloading and sharing software online is growing in a pace which is very hard to follow. And of course there are still those companies or people who intentionally and collectively develop freeware for free use for everyone.

Maybe there will be more strict online rules and laws made, which establish the rights and wrongs in the Internet, Then there should be some more efficient control systems made, which have more control over what is going on in the internet. In this case the pirating is made harder and the punishments made stricter so that no one wanted to brake the laws. Then there will be companies who sell their software, maybe use vendor lock-in strategy or some perks perhaps to keep their loyal customers. There will probably still be companies which produce freeware for non-commercial purposes. The whole system would be more under control.

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

If I think about copying restrictions and whether they are useful and for whom, I try to think from two different point of views. I am a little hypocritical about this thing.

If I think of myself as a creator or maybe an investor of a great new software, to which I have spent a lot of time or money to develop, I would like to earn something from it. It would certainly not feel good if the product I made would be used, copied and shared without me getting nothing of it. I would like there to be copying restrictions on my software.

In the other hand I am never very keen on paying for any software. I always try to get them somewhere for free or use an alternative freeware. Therefore I understand the users who are against the copying restrictions and would rather get the software for free from the internet as they are used to get everything else free from there.

Exeptions of copying restrictions should be made for educational purposes. Software which would help children to read or students to do their homework or people to get through their financial difficulties for example should be more easily retrievable. Sometimes companies should do so called 'pro bono' work in order to do good to people who are in a more vulnerable situation. Of course in this case there should be a system of control over the purposes the software is used for in order to prevent commercial use of the product.