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Code Cutouts

I’ve released a new version of the fastbreeder genetic programming synth, mostly just an update by Atte André Jensen to keep it building on newer compilers.

Exquisite_Code.. February 15 - 19th & 20th 2010.. 10-6pm daily.. E:vent Gallery, 96 Teesdale St. London. E2.. 8 Writers pitched 8 hours a day for 5 days against despotic edit-code.. Yield: one book.. Print. Launch. Read. Evaluate.

Forget insulation from the cold nagging existential doubt or refuge in stories comforting the General Intellect; a dark Forest of Things is foregrounded in exquisite_code, a radical constructivist experiment that hothouses a collaborative writing production.

Eight international writers will work eight hours a day for five days generating text-prompts, text and edit-software in unrelenting micro-sessions to create a cadaverous exquisite_code life-novel . Text will be produced in response to prompts conspired by the writers at the end of each session. But only after bespoke edit-software has wormed its way through it, cutting, chewing and spitting gobbets of the text into a dump from which the life-novel will be elaborated. This edit-worm is itself interrogated and re-written in scheduled code writing sprints by the writers. At all times all participants are available for public scrutiny and interaction, and all writing will be on live display whilst continuously extruded as hardcopy from line printers.

The event will culminate in a Saturday night exquisite_code LAUNCH PARTY (7.30 -11.30pm) on 20th February at E:vent Gallery with extracts of the novel presented to the public through human-machine readings, performances and detournements made by participants from the week’s accumulated materials. Publication of all code, prompts and final text will be by way of print-on-demand publication in collaboration with Mute.

Leif Elggren [SWE] writer/artist/performer; Mara Goldwyn [US] writer/performer; Dave Griffiths [UK/FI] artist/coder/performer; Brendan Howell [US/DE] writer/coder/artist; Jonathan Kemp [UK] writer/artist; Laura Oldfield Ford [UK] writer/artist; Eleanora Oreggia [IT/NL] writer/coder/artist/performer; Sabrina Small [US] writer/artist; / with additional performances from Martin Howse [UK/DE]; Preslav Literary School [UK/DE]; and Ryan Jordan [UK]

E:vent Gallery is near Bethnal Green Tube Station. Buses 106, 254, 253, 48 and 55 pass close by. see http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/contact.

This is an exquisite_code production in collaboration with E:vent Gallery, London, Openmute.org, and supported by Arts Council England.

http://www.eventnetwork.org.uk/events/exquisitecode
http://exquisite-code.com

And some more - must get on with some proper work today…

Still distracted, tried using the new (voxels->blobby) command to use the marching cubes algo in fluxus to mesh the feedback into a solid shape. The code is posted below.

(clear)

; make some voxels
(define vx (build-voxels 50 50 50))

; do the feedback
(for ((i (in-range 0 40)))
     (with-primitive vx ; not sure what's happening here
      (voxels-sphere-influence (vector 0 0 0) (vector 1 1 1) 0.2)
      (voxels-calc-gradient) ; <- probably repeated application of this...
      (voxels-point-light (vector 0 0 0) (vmul (vector 1 1 1) 0.5)))) ; <- and then this does the trick

; make a blobby from the resulting voxels
(define bb (voxels->blobby vx))
(destroy vx) ; dont need the voxels anymore

; convert to polygons
(define pb (with-state
    (scale 5)
    (blobby->poly bb)))

(destroy bb) ; don't need the blobby any more

; calculate normals and make shiny
(with-primitive pb
    (recalc-normals 1)
    (shinyness 50)
    (specular (vector 1 1 1)))

; slap on some lights
(light-diffuse 0 (vector 0.1 0.1 0.1))
(light-specular 0 (vector 0 0 0))
(let ((l (make-light 'point 'free)))
    (light-diffuse l (vector 1 1 1))
    (light-position l (vector 0 30 10))
    (light-specular l (vector 1 1 1)))

(let ((l (make-light 'point 'free)))
    (light-diffuse l (vector 0 0 0.6))
    (light-position l (vector 0 -50 50))
    (light-specular l (vector 0 1 1)))

(clear-colour 0.5)

Trying to write some documentation for the voxels primitive in fluxus, I was completely sidetracked by this accidental discovery:

A technique for finding areas of stress between tectonic plates. No collision happening yet, but points along the edges of the plates are connected when they are close.

Things are getting more interesting with the growth script. The resource map used by the lifeforms is now drained as they use up the energy available. This energy doesn’t grow back, and so puts a limit on the time a fixed world can sustain life. The nodes have another trick up their sleeve though - energy flows upstream along the connections, so older nodes (who have drained their surroundings) are sustained for a time by the energy captured by their dependants.

So over a year on from leaving the world of computer games megacorporations and big budget movie special effects, it’s maybe time to be a bit less terse than usual and compare and contrast against life in the shadowy world of arts, academia and free software.

There are fairly obvious benefits of leaving the 9.00-6.30 if-your-lucky world, free to work from home, a shared “space” or a greasy cafe with stolen wifi and no set hours are great. No need to harp on about that. One of the best things I’ve noticed is that my life is now more varied socially, with different projects I’ve met and worked with people from disparate backgrounds in the last year. In a company it’s very easy to just mix with people with similar outlooks as yourself, and it’s generally simple to explain what you do. The world I’m in now is much more messy, more of a network than a hierarchy - and it’s challenging to fit into the often surprising situations that arise.

What I want to concentrate on however, is what I think both academia and arts could learn from the commercial world. It’s not something I hear much about, as it seems the unwritten agreement that it should always be the other way around.

It seems noticeable to me now that teamwork is more critical in a company than elsewhere. In fact the best people I have worked with have exhibited some degree of ego loss, sometimes an almost fanatical desire to make ‘the right decision’ for everyone - not because they will be praised for it, but just because it makes sense and to do otherwise would be abhorrent. In games or film companies, people like this are highly sought after, whereas my feeling is that people who shout a bit too loud or desire a bit too much recognition tend to get weeded out after a time. It seems to me that the worlds of academia and art seem to have their selection biased in the other direction - as they are based on highly individualistic metrics.

Focusing on academia, I’ve been surprised at how much the publication system forces a secretive, protective culture where exposure of material has to be sensitively stage managed. I can clearly see why this arises, but the culture it enforces (a default distrust of one’s peers) seems counter to the core business of what being a scientist should be about. Several projects I’ve been involved in have found it difficult to negotiate the methods of open source development because of this.

I think the assumption that individualism and the competitiveness that it fosters is the obvious way to achieve the best results needs to be reconsidered. It seems in some cases to be restricting us, and that perhaps (to paraphrase foam) these are the times in which we need more branching out, more interdisciplinary thinking which all requires more default trust between us individually, and our many tribes.

So this brings me back to free software. While it can hardly be credited for lacking people bordering on the egotistical, there is something about the openness, and the endless reports of mistakes you’ve made from complete strangers which I think encourages this more humble mentality.

This is the same growth algorithm as the video I posted on Tuesday, but with a non-uniform resource - painted with a texture map. There is a bug meaning that failed connections aren’t deleted, but I like the way that islands are colonised. Posting here I just noticed the similarity with the hapstar graphs…