I just finished a very satisfying workshop at Shakerag in Sewanee, Tennesse. It was inspiring to spend a week writing code surrounded by craft makers doing everything from pottery and book binding to embroidery and twig geometries. It reminded me that no creative practice exists in a vacuum, but stands on the shoulders of the collective knowledge produced by all the makers that went before.

My thanks to all the great people at Shakerag, and especially my studio assistant Greg Pond (an excellent sound artist and sculptor.) Between the awesome food, great company and inspiring conversations it was a week well spent down South.

The following are some useful links that came up in the course of the week, reposted here for convenience.

• Classes and objects:
  - Shiffman’s Processing tutorial about objects
  - Shiffman’s Particle Systems tutorial
  - How my Dog learned Polymorphism
  - Java Tutorial: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts
• Processing.org Tutorials section
• wiki.processing.org (tutorials, hacks, documentation)
• 3D geometry generation: Toroid
• Fabbing and 3D printing:
  - Meshlab 3D model viewer
  - unwrappingLib for polygon unwrapping
  - Unfold Fab project for 3D printing ceramics
  - Hemesh library for complex 3D meshes
• Book: Getting started with Processing

We also had some fun with Arduino that made me realize I really do need to pick up some more physical computing tools.

I will be teaching a one-week Processing Foundation workshop at Shakerag in Tennessee June 13-19. It should be a great excuse to visit Tennessee in the bloom of early summer and fraternize with other artists. See the registration page for details.

The workshop will give an introduction to Processing for artists, and focus on ways of integrating Processing into the participants’ art practice. The course description is as follows:

The rise of digital media tools for artists has led to an increasing understanding of software as a medium in its own right. Going beyond the confines of commercial software, artists are experimenting with code to create new forms of expression in areas like generative art, interactive installations, and information visualization.

This workshop will give an introduction to the idea of computational aesthetics, which understands form as a product of a computational process. We will use the popular Open Source tool Processing to start sketching with code, then move on to more advanced topics like video and vector output. Built on top of the Java language, Processing is simultaneously disarming in its simplicity and impressive in its ultimate potential. The last part of the week you will focus on individual work, during which we can look at how Processing can be applied to different forms of artistic practice.

The workshops take place on the campus of the St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School. Hope to see you there!

Create an interactive type experience. Experiment with animated and interactive approaches to typography, applying computational strategies for animation.Tell a story or make the user create their own story.

Work in groups. Make the result printable. The challenge is to make a static object become alive, transform and move over time. Key goal: Engage – interact – surprise.

Examples: Typographic animation, text scrollers, dynamic letters, emotional typography, automatic layouts, type as pattern, randomized fonts.
Deadline: Presentation Thursday 27.11.

• Thinking with type
• Type + Code
• Teaching Type
• I Love Typography
• Typographyserved

• Peter Cho: Typotopo
• Peter Cho: Thesis
• Hudson-Powell: Responsive Type
• Lego Font Creator
• Michael Schmidt: Genotyp
• Vítor Quelhas: Dyntypo
• Ricardo Marxer: Caligraft
• Nicolai, a modular font

Create an animated weather system. It can be literal or absurd, but should include multiple elements moving as part of a greater whole. Animate simple shapes so that they give the impression of natural phenomena. Use colors to hint at emotional qualities. The weather should have an interactive element, reacting to user input.

Examples: Snow and rain. Leaves falling. Wind blowing. Dust storms. Tornadoes. Sunshine. Waves at sea.

Deadline: Presentation Monday at 10.00.

This month I am teaching a foundation course in computational aesthetics at AHO together with Hans Gerhard Meier. The topic is computational typography.

Files from the workshop so far can be found here:
http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/workshops/081104_aho

All you need to do is download the ZIP file and unpack it in your Processing sketchbook directory. When restarting Processing there should be an “aho” hierarchy of examples in the Sketchbook menu.

The following is a list of some useful Processing resources.

• Daniel Shiffman: Learning Processing
• Processing books (with free sample chapters)
• Processing blogs
• openProcessing (sample code)

Workshop at Mary Schiller Myers School of Art, U of Akron

I’m teaching a workshop at the University of Akron as part of my residency at the Myers School of Art, which the ElectroPlastiques exhibition is a part of.

Code from the workshop will be online here:
workshop.evolutionzone.com/workshops/080324_uakron.

ElectroPlastiques: Object #1 / Grid distortion

I have a new exhibition coming up in Akron, Ohio as part of an artist in residence stay at the Myers School of Art. Titled "ElectroPlastiques", it is my first ever solo show. Interesting that it would take a show in the US for that to happen, although not really so surprising given that the European media art scene is geared towards festivals. The exceptions are the few European media artists who have found gallery representation, a process that seems to be going even slower in Europe than in the US.

I’m using this show to highlight some of the existing topics of my work with realtime animation, as well as a new direction dealing with physical output. I will screen a series of my generative animations, such as Neon Organic, ElectroPlastique #1 & #2 and Illuminations A. These pieces explore the plastic qualities of parametric software processes, where a single set of rules gives rise to an infinite sequence of possible configurations. The title of the show is intended to refer to the plasticity of digital media.

As a counter-point, I will be showing manifestations of my work in physical formats, where animation gives way to other qualities. My rapid prototyping pieces Object #1 - #3 and new work like the Grid distortion laser cuts explore the tactile possibilities of digital fabrication, while prints like the Packing series go beyond the limited resolution of the screen to explore issues of graphic detail.

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As you might have noticed I’ve replaced the code formatting plugin that I use on the blog. I had trouble with the Geshi-based plugin I used before, so I replaced it with Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter. This produces lovely formatting and works well – mostly.

SyntaxHighlighter hiccups when encountering the < character unless there is a blank space directly following it, most likely due to it being interpreted as the start of a HTML tag. Also, the "copy to clipboard function produces incorrect code because the text copied has < and > characters converted into the HTML entities &lt; and &gt;. However, I’m not sure if this is a problem with SyntaxHighlighter or with WordPress, since WordPress sometimes messes with formatting by automagically trying to provide good HTML substitutes for certain character combinations.

Most frustrating of all, WordPress has started replacing the ’s in “it’s” with a triple ellipsis character, as well as some other strangeness. Any tips for fool-proof plugins for posting properly formatted code would be most appreciated!

Code from the workshop will be online here: workshops/080310_khio. Check out Kuler for RGB color goodness.

Inspiration for media architecture:

• Realities:United
• Lab[au]: Dexia Tower

We’re making good progress at the HyperWerk digital fabrication workshop, see the new Fabbing @ HyperWerk Flickr group for details.