Lewitt’s Quadrangle

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Executing this work was a trial of patience. At the onset I was drawing lines with certainty, but nearing the weary end I realized the glory of parenthesis, brackets, and color-coding systems, all of which ended up on my instructions (along with triumphant lines crossing out what I had finished.) The instructions for this work are code in a literal sense that they are explicit instructions written by a human to achieve an end, even if that end is only to bewilder another human (which, arguably, some programmers set out to do.) This artwork is interesting in the way it connects the large amounts of people executing it yet allows them to preserve their individuality through the work. Every interpretation ends up different, though the instructions remain the same.

 

Reverse

1. Draw a small rectangle r anywhere on the paper.
2. Draw a set of at least 10 small rectangles, which I will call S, going every which way around r.
3. Select a random element s from S, then select a random edge of s, and extend that edge outward away from r. The length of the edge should be much longer than the original edge.
4. Randomly decide whether to draw a random amount of edges perpendicular to the one you just drew.
5. Repeat step 3 to 4 until satisfied.
6. Repeat step 1 to step 5 until satisfied.

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Animals

Instruction:

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Here are the images produced:

instruction_1 instruction_2 instruction_3

The drawings of each animal are a lot more detailed than I have anticipated. I was expecting quantity over quality, but I got only 3 animals for 2 of the drawings. People also did not shake their head as much as I expected either. In the end I feel that was a redundant instruction.

The reason why I wrote this in pseudo-Python code is because I was appalled by Sol LeWitt’s instructions; I refused to use English as medium for my instructions. However, the day after I wrote this, I realized that English in fact can convey the same message much better (less confusing and more concise), something along the lines of “start from the smallest animal you can think of, keep drawing a larger animal than the previous eating that. If your animal is too large, start from smallest animal again. Stop when you are bored”.

Creatures that Tweet

I found this really interesting because it showed how the innocent mind of a child can be so creative and so many hidden treasures can be discovered just by working with someone unexpected. We all need to learn how to bend the rules a little and sometimes happy accidental creations can be found.

 

Math was Invented for a Reason

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I drew the first 2 lines with some struggle, but I managed by crossing out the instructions I have already finished. However, starting from the third line, I was no longer able to keep track of which points are the points for the line, and which points are the reference points for drawing those points. Yes, this instruction is code, but it is a disgustingly bad one. Math was invented for a reason, and if Sol LeWitt even attempted to be efficient, he would put parentheses around phrases to emphasize where the description of each point or reference point started and ended. A good code would be able to execute the same drawing with just a few lines. But of course, this was not his intention, so be it.

Ralph-Assignment-02-Tweet

I find this tweet to be indicative of a shift from reliance on journalism and broadcasts to a more personal communication from famous individuals. Politicians’ positions on important issues can now be referenced in a clear and concise manner.

Link together the Internet

ifttt

Out of the two recipes I made, I find the “if date/time, then send sms” trigger to be extremely useful for me. My phone remains almost always within my reach, and I often use it to set up reminders on the calendar. However, my phone doesn’t give me an alarm reminder. The connections with different websites and applications that IFTTT provides allows me to set up many different alarms and reminders from different websites quickly and efficiently. My first trigger is an alarm that sends me a text message in the beginning of the month to remind me to buy dog food for my grandparents back home. The other trigger will help me keep  track of the weather so I can change my attire that day accordingly.

I think very highly of Jer Thorp’s viewpoint on the relations between people with each other. The internet lives off of people trying to find connections with each other, in an attempt to reach out, learn, give and explore. Jer Thorp showed us that an API is relatively easy to program, which I think is such a powerful and important tool. IFTTT is a perfect example of people connecting with each other. Softwares that once had no relations with each other are placed on one website and given the ability to connect together. I think this both allows people to use the website more efficiently, but is also a great way to promote new sites to people, as they browse through the different applications.

In my opinion, Jim Campbell’s “Formula for Computer Art” is a very simple and direct way of showing how items are created. Basic “ingredients” run through the left side, while magically on the right side, a new item appears. Both Jer Thorp and IFTTT shows us the details in the middle of this formula, how different ingredients mix together to become another useful new item.

Ralph-Assignment-02-Instructional

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Instructions:

  1. Choose a letter of the alphabet and a number less than 10
  2. Start from the letter you chose and shift through the alphabet by the number you chose. Remember this letter.
  3. Gain access to a computer with internet connection.
  4. Google image search “Street map of ” and enter the letter from step 2.
  5. Allow Google to auto-complete your inquiry with the name of a city.
  6. Choose image you believe has a pleasant composition.
  7. Copy the image onto an 8.5×11 copy paper with a 2HB pencil. Be as precise as you desire.
  8. In an enclosed space on the map, draw a line following the contours of the perimeter without lifting the pencil or crossing another line and fill up the space.
  9. Repeat until the drawing seems sufficiently filled up or your wrists get tired.

My instruction was originally meant to use a street map as a basis for composition, which should be obvious to any human that searches up “Street map of…”, but I was not specific on this point. One of my test subjects interpreted it such that she chose any image that happened to appear in the search. As a result, one of the drawings ended up being based on a logo. Step 8 was also written in a manner difficult to understand, so it would serve well to expand it out to several steps to maintain clarity.

Overlooking the above problems, I injected enough randomizing elements so these instructions should produce a different drawing every time, but with similar visual qualities. I did also write the instruction so that a pleasant composition should arise every time, but a mechanical compiler would not be able to make such a value judgment.

Ralph-Assignment-02-Lewitt

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Were this Lewitt piece written in an existing computer code, the computer would be able to churn out a result in less than a fraction of a second. For me, it took me about an hour to sift through Lewitt’s instructions in an organized manner. I would consider this to be a code written in a computer language that Lewitt invented. It has certain organizational syntax that I had to become accustomed to, and that’s what consumed a bulk of my time. Even so, either my interpretation of his syntax is off, or Lewitt made an error writing his own code, as some “between” statements ended up with 3 parameters and a “to” statement was made without a preceding “from”.

IFTTT

I think If This Then That is a great, both in terms of conceptualization and in terms of realization. I have long wished for something which, when I upload my photography to deviantArt will automatically update my Facebook page and my WordPress site, or which would amalgamate all the messages I receive from various social media sites into one clean interface. I envisioned eventually coding something like this myself, perhaps as a commercial project, but condone IFTTT largely because I do not believe I could have ever created something so beautifully designed and intuitive for the first-time user by myself. It was therefore interesting to see the differences between the various APIs mentioned in Jack Burnham’s article: the API created for the specific purpose of art is beautifully designed. Those created quickly in an hour are effective, but not beautifully. I believe these embody computer programming on its own, and computer programming with art thrown in. My main interest thus far in the BCSA program is in combining these two to create something both functional and beautiful: something accessible not only to programmers, but to the average computer user. This is where Jim Campbell’s animated diagram comes in. Human Computer Interaction is one of the average user’s largest expectations, who expect all computers will one day automatically run software like Dragon, or come embedded with a LeapMotion controller (which HP is apparently working on as we speak).

The recipe I created on IFTTT is extremely simple. It sends me an email every Mon Tue Wed Thu Sun -day at 22h30 to tell me to get off the computer and wind down before going to bed. Nevertheless, I feel this will be beneficial as the computer is my main source of distraction late at night. It was so simple to create, I am sure I will get round to more complicated recipes in the future — perhaps linking my wordpress and facebook photography pages.