Instructional drawing

Although I did expect a variant in the art that was produced from this assignment, I did not feel as if the participants themselves would be as surprised as they were about the piece. My participants all created the piece believing that their method of following instructions was what everyone else used. Afterwards, when I showed them the pieces that others created, many of them were surprised that the instructions had produced such a variant and were especially surprised to see that there were different ways to understand the instructions. In retrospect, I felt as if I should have made the instructions more challenging or detailed however I can also appreciate the simplicity of the instructions since the participants were enjoying themselves as they took the instructions to new lengths.

Instructions:

  1. Hello.
  2. Acquire a tool with a straight edge. The tool does not matter, just the edge.
  3. Now that you have your tool, draw a line across your page using the straight edge of your tool.
  4. Once again using the straight edge of your tool, draw a line directly perpendicular to the previous line. Using a protractor to measure the angle of this line is not required. Just eyeball it.
  5. Now repeat step 4.
  6. Repeat step 5.
  7. Repeat step 6.
  8. Look at the clock or any other device that can allow you access to a clock. Memorize the time. Repeat steps 4-7 until 5 or more minutes have passed.
  9. Using the edge of your tool carefully draw one final line through your drawing that ends roughly an inch away from the border of the page.

photo

Reverse Arts-Engineering

ems2-yah004

draw several straight lines onto the paper.

repeat:
1. draw lines off of existing straight lines forming an angle between 45 and 90 degrees.
2. if two lines are parallel, connect them with each other.

do not let any of the lines intersect.

end.

Recipe

My recipe:ifttt

 

Email myself world news. I really need to start getting more in touch with the rest of the world somehow, and this should make me be more motivated about it.

According to Thorp, API is a bridge between one piece of software to another. That is essentially IFTTT, which bridges single actions between two software to produce an overall useful or interesting function for the user. I felt that was also what Campbell’s Formula for Computer Art was illustrating – given an input, some background code “magically” converts it into a different output. The first time I read Thorp’s article, I felt I understood what he was saying, except for the part about art. In my mind, I always kept art, which I thought of as unique or aesthetically appealing visual expression, and useful tools, which I thought Thorp was describing about APIs in the majority of his article, in two separate categories. I checked out Pitch Interactive’s “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” project, which I thought was going to fall into the “useful tools” category, and was surprised at how visually appealing the moving lines that came together part on top of the timeline turned out. I think I now have an understanding of what Thorp meant by API being a bridge for art.

 

Instructional Drawing in Reverse

reversal

Setup (do this once)

Distribute nonintersecting lines of similar length and variable orientation across a plane.

Loop (repeat this indefinitely)

Allow lines to branch out of existing lines, provided the new lines:

– are drawn perpendicular to the lines from which they stem

– do not intersect other lines

– do not exceed the length of the lines from which they stem

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Instructional Drawing in Reverse

0. The drawing should make you think of layout of a city (or multiple separate cities).
1. Draw 5 non-intersecting, non-parallel lines of various lengths on the paper.
2. For each of the 5 lines, on either side of the line, draw any number of perpendicular line segments of varying lengths starting from the line, such that these line segments do not cross any existing line segments (lines may touch).
3. Pick any existing line segment. Draw any number of perpendicular line segments extending from it such that the new segments do not cross any existing line.
4. Repeat step 3 to see enclosed shapes (mostly boxes) start to form. Stop when you are satisfied with the clusters of shapes.2013-09-03 10.18.45

 

discussions with roommates about lewitt

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It was fun, everybody was reading again and again the instructions, made some notes on the paper. “what, a point half between a point half between a point…”. Stefan is convinced syntax of the first point is wrong, “please, ask Golan”. Hmm, I’m not sure I trust Stefan he is a postdoc at the CMU and does some insane calculations for robotics.

For me the first point was a pain in the as, but the second point, I got it. I was happy, I felt that I could decode Lewitt’s code. Sure that instruction was a code, more a poetic one than machine readable code. Every time converting information with a set of rules into another piece of information we can speak about a piece of code. Knitting patterns, the recipe for German sourdough bread and the score of the 9th symphony, these are all codes.

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Melody Ball

Checked this out because it seemed like an interesting idea for visualizing music… and because the tweet makes it seems simple and fun, which it is. Its physics is realistic, and it’s complete with an interactive ball.

Sol Lewitt

My attempt:img003

 

Reading the instructions for the first couple of times were very frustrating, until I realized there was supposed to be parenthesis around certain phrases, so I retyped the instructions with parenthesis. For instructions for each line, I made reference dots from the innermost parenthesis first, then worked my way outward. I also found the “axis” part confusing, and opted to ignore it (yikes) and went with intersecting point of lines as with all the other parts of the instruction. If this was code, the computer would have threw a fit from the parsing errors already.

APIs, Formulas, and Art

My Recipe

Screen Shot 2013-09-03 at 1.00.26 AM

My first recipe sends me a text at midnight telling me to dim the lights. I like it because it is a practical way for me to remind myself that it’s getting late and I should sleep soon.

Screen Shot 2013-09-03 at 1.08.08 AMMy second recipe is more about thinking. I’ve had times in my life where I get up around sunset, and go to bed not too much after it’s dark. Those times are very different from now, when artificial lighting and lots of time indoors means I don’t notice the sunrise or sunset as much. So, I made a recipe to put it on my calendar, and hey, maybe I’ll watch a few more sunsets because of it.

IFTT & Campbell’s Formula for Computer Art

Jim Campbell’s formula for computer art, to be, is accurate observation tinged with satire; many projects really are that way (neither first word, and not often last word art.) However, I think that Campbell’s general formula could still generate meaningful “last word” art. IFTT (as a wrapper for APIs) and APIs both enable different inputs and outputs into the formula, though I do think IFTT is less likely to generate meaningful art (vs. working directly with APIs) because it constrains inputs and outputs so much.