Eddo Stern: Landlord Vigilante and other Machinema

cabvideo.jpgKCET Online has an interview with Eddo Stern on Landlord Vigilante that has links to three of his machinema art films, Landlord Vigilante, Vietnam Romance and Waco Resurrection. Landlord is a longer narrated story of a woman taxi driver/landlord. Vietnam takes period music and games recreating the period stitching together vignettes that recall popular culture on the war. Waco defies description, or resurrection. All use game engines to render the story.

I’ve blogged Eddo Stern’s work on art and games before.

The Dictionary of Words in the Wild

Image of Word Cloud The Dictionary of Words in the Wild is an experiment in public textuality that I’m leading. Andrew MacDonald has done the programming and is contributing images (along with others). You can get an account and upload pictures of words or phrases. We have an application programming interface that you can use to then create web applications that call the dictionary. Join, sample, load! We need pictures.

Try a phrase:


James pointed me to a similar experiment, The Visual Dictionary – a visual exploration of words in the real world. This focuses on single words and has a ranking/rating system. It doesn’t, however, have the API we have. I wonder how we can interoperate? Can such dictionaries be a movement?

Haefner: Kite Aerial Photography

Kite Photo RigKite Aerial Photography is a photography site by by Scott Haefner that includes 360 degree panoramas taken from kites. Haefner is a professional photographer and site designer whose site also describes the equipment needed to kite aerial photography. The site itself, along with its companion on his Ground-based Photography, is an example of a well designed photo site. Thanks to Shawn for this.

Live coding: Impromptu

Live coding is coding as performance. Matt alerted me to a Impromptu which is a programming language designed for sound coding performances. There is a gallery of sound performances and code at the site to give an idea of what the live coders might be typing to get what effects.

Live coding would seem to be connected to realtime coding competitions like live coda when the coding challenge is performative and the competition environment can be witnessed as a performance.

Pedagogically I wonder if live coding is more effective than write-compile-run coding. Certain languages like Ruby have live coding environments that let you type commands and see the results immediately. What is different here is the idea of language created for live coding in a performative context.

mandalabrot.net

Mandalabrot Imagemandalabrot.net is the home of kiddphunk (Ian Timourian) and his visualizations, experiments and remixes. He has a number of Context Free Design Grammar experiments. Timourian also has a photo kiddphunk site with an doubled way of showing images.

Thanks to Johnny R. for pointing me to this collection of “Explorations of Generative Art, Mathematics, Algorithmic Design and the Beauty of Life / Vol 1”.

General Idea

General Idea

One of my favorite conceptual art groups, General Idea has a web site. General Idea was a Toronto based collaborative of three artists who put together installations, performances, boutiques, and manifestos. From ARTFORUM on FILE MEGAZINE:

the three began working under another signature rubric, “Miss General Idea.” A 1971 altered photograph, which they called their “artist’s conception,” figures her as a transvestite, rubber-outfitted version of Hugo Ball at Cabaret Voltaire. Miss General Idea functioned as the group’s muse, and General Idea hosted a series of Miss General Idea beauty pageants that set out in countercultural fashion “to (capture) glamour without falling into it.” (Art in America, March 2005)

Two of the three have since died, only AA Bronson is still alive and working.