Post on 28-Apr-2023
an inquiry intoalgorithmic forms procedural means
digital creativitycomputational expressions
“Yon are four unreserved information of accessories. Those which are calculated to accumulation life’s bar-my and pshysical narration and de-grees of exemption such as stirring, pencils, books, and chief movers, and those which are adapted to pact the in conformity with and degrees of release of those who unconsciously fray them; e.g. traps, prisons, weapons, etc. The cunning classification may be identified as the flawless equipment and the urge as the opposed mat. They may to boot be classed as Livin-gry and Killingry or as life-advantaging or life-frustrating paraphernalia, in-
dividually. Thither panoply may further be isolated into duo substitute obsce-ne tuition the cleverness accoutermen-ts and the property apparatus: sche-mes mechanism are wide the gear mosey in truth be leak out by match up chap native nakedly in the mother-land frank associate of uncouth in front of apparatus quiddity, e.g. stanch and arrows, chunk chisels. The belon-gings panoply are round the supplies indebted by adjustment tools which cannot be progress by connect tramp as a concomitant hydroelectric nurtu-re or a contemporaneous crate expres-sway. The notification was the greatest
land implement by credit of the declara-tion on every side the assets of here folk in on all sides of hence began to mix. Defy is solely amid ani-mates in the degrees of limit and maginification to which he has demonstrated an accelerating apt-ness to remodel empress ecological patterning about the talk by order the characterization of tiara envi-ronmental relationship, structures, metabolic deportment cruise.”
Plagiarized letter from BMF to WAS (2015)
Playstocene
Abstract 5
playstocene
Thoughts in the form of a dialogue 11
electronic media, algorithms
digital literacy
indexicality, performativity, relationality
conceptualism, engagement
technics, power
education
Note on Method 31
Flipbooks 33
Hypogeums of Hanoi 53
Parametrized Tangram 63
Patterned Origami-Paper 87
Materials 97
References 105
5
Ever since its dawn, information technology has received
mixed receptions: as collective imagination coagulated around
techno-enthusiasm and dystopian anxieties, audiovisual and
literary works of art restructured themselves beside the
rise of process-based artifacts, be them digital or not.
The scope of this thesis is to find viable practices to improve
digital literacy, computational thinking and to stimulate
a critical engagement to digital media to mid- and high-schoolers
by exploring protagonists, practices and theoretical hints;
framing contemporary art-practices, with particular regards
to those employing data structures and algorithmical
techniques.Several artifacts are submitted to engage with
interactive demonstration, to be taken apart and reassembled
so as to allow further exploration through individual or group-
work.
Several artifacts were created responding to the matter
of inquiry. These aren’t presented as commercially-viable
products; instead, they are meant to be decomposed into their
parts, to make concepts tangible. In no particular order they
are:
— a set of flipbooks
— a series of wooden puzzles based on the tangram
— the redesign of a wooden puzzle named Hanoi’s Hypogeum
— algorithmically-patterned origami paper
NEW FORMS VS REFORMS
(extract from a letter to World Architectural Students by R. Buckminster Fuller -complete text on page 51 of this report. )
"There are two main classes of tools. Those which are designed to increaselife’s mental and physical advantage and degrees of freedom such as gears, pencils,books, and prime movers, and those which are designed to decrease the advantageand degrees of freedom of those who inadvertently encounter them; e. g. - traps,prisons, weapons, etc. The first class may be identified as the positive tools andthe second as the negative tools. They may also be classed as Livingry and Killingry- or as life-advantaging or life-frustrating tools, respectively. All tools may alsobe divided into two other main classes -- the craft tools and the industrial tools -craft tools are all the tools that can be produced by one man starting nakedly inthe wilderness without knowledge of any previous tools existence, e. g. - bowsand arrows, stone chisels. The industrial tools are all the tools made by othertools which cannot be produced by one man as the Queen Mary or a modern hydro-electric dam or a modern motor expressway. The word was the first industrial toolby virtue of the word all the experiences of all men in all history began to integrate.Man is unique amongst animates in the degrees of incisiveness and magnificationto which he has demonstrated an accelerating capability to alter his ecologicalpatterning about the earth by altering the nature of his environmental controls --structures -- a&metabolic process facilities -- mechanics -- as a progressiveextroversion and severance of his integral, or corporeal, functions.?”
Phase I Document 1: Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends, and Needs (Fuller, 1963)
7
IN-BETWEENSA research concerning design and art is presented
in the following pages in the form of a dialogue, a literary
form which seeks to reflect the explorative aim of the project.
Assumed that “the challenge the Anthropocene poses is a challenge
not just to national security, to food and energy markets,
or to our ‘way of life’”, but that, mainly “the greatest challenge
the Anthropocene poses may be to our sense of what it means
to be human” (Scranton, 2013), it is not surprising designers
are starting to turn themselves towards speculative practices,
aiming “to create spaces for discussion and debate about
alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people’s
imaginations to flow freely. Design speculations can act
as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship
to reality“ (Dunne&Raby, 2012).
In this spirit, seeking to develop a wide-encompassing
consciousness about our more refined tools, the title is acidly
punning with a geological era characterized by severe mutaments
in the living habits of animals populating the Earth; major
exctinction events of mammals as a consequence of climate
changes; the appearance of new types of human and of more
refined tools than those seen in the eras before.
TOTAL TIME SPENT IN VARIOUS ACTIVITIES BYPRIMITIVE, AGRICULTURAL & INDUSTRIAL MAN.
Yearsof
OPTIONALLY INVESTABLE TIME including childhood play
Work
Education
Misc. reqds.
Eating
Sleeping
Life years
TotalTimei nYears
18
TimeinYears
Life years 70
Total
Life years 35
13
TotalTimei nYears
27
2 4
PRIMITIVE MAN AGRICULTURAL MAN INDUSTRIAL MAN(a 20 year old in 1960)
(Fuller, id.)
11
You spend a lot of time on your computer, why is that?
I tried to gain a better understanding of how this
tool works. In a book discussing the interactions
between art and media, I found an institutional
declaration of intents which sparked my interest:
“In response to a study of the European Community
launched on the future of art-schools “Don Foresta,
a professor at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décorat-
ifs in Paris, proposed that “schools must teach
the new technologies, debate their role in society,
master their use, and renovate visual languages. They
must humanize the new technologies by better adapting
them to human creativity fulfilling a role that may
never be accepted by the marketplace, but which could
have a positive impact on it”. (Lovejoy, 2005)
But one could argue: could art-schools do better
for us than just renovate visual languages? Spreading
12
digital literacy? Discussing proprietary software
and its alternatives? Setting new values, or develop-
ing a consciousness about social-struggles that have
been there, which one should remember for the future?
As the authors of a review on Imaginaria artshow
sharply pointed out, being unaware of these issue
might lead to a point where “it is technology and
science that sets the agenda” (Morrison&Fuller, 2004).
Considering how differently we behave since electro-
nic action-at-distance has become almost banal,
I started reading a book on the affinities between
New media art and ancient Islamic cultures. What
mostly interested me was a concept I had already
encountered in another literary context, that of hap-
ticity. This term was used by Emile Reisch, editor
of an Austrian art-historician writing at the begin-
ning of the XX century: Alois Riegl, who sought
to make a distinction between optisch and taktisch.
The concept saw a reprise and a development
in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and was featured
in the book Il crepuscolo dei barbari, by the Italian
sociologist Alberto Abruzzese. In the latter, said
concept is used in relation to the inhabitation of
our cyberspaces, discussing the shift human culture
could be experiencing from the standpoint of the
Italian intellectual.
If modernity and capitalism rode on printing presses
and typographical matrixes, what is going to happen
as more accurate forms of transmission and telepre-
sence appear and persist? What is going to change
with such a reversal of time into space?
“Meanwhile, vast user-produced online social networks like craiglist,
Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life can be thought of as haptic spaces—not, as is often asserted, because
they are rhizomatic but because they are so deeply interconnected, they present an infinite texture with no center of perception. These sites’ algorithmic organizing princpiles
set up a basic multidimensional grid composed of repeateable units, rather
like the muqarnas ornament we [...] see on Islamic domes.“
(Marks, 2012)
13
So, did you grow conscious of the limits of the discipline? Did you manage to tran-slate these concepts into practice?
At first, I assembled a theoretical path with regards
to Conceptualist art-practices, particularly those
with affinities to technological proceeding, at times
veering onto the path of videogaming. Then I started
to coinceve forms and means to tinker with, putting
a practical focus on the main subject: algorithms.
In the paper Abstraction and Complexity, scholar Lev
Manovich remarks the importance to respond
“to the need for new types of representations, adequa-
te for the needs of a global information society, cha-
racterized by new levels of complexity (in this case
understood in descriptive rather than in theoretical
terms). [...] While software abstraction usually makes
more direct references to the physical and biological
than the social, it maybe also appropriate to think
of many works in this paradigm as such symbolic
representations” (Manovich, 2004). Some cases digital-
ly-based hybrid forms will be discussed later, a part
of which could be described with the term system
stories, as defined by by Mitchell Whitelaw: “a tran-
slation or narration of the processual structures,
ontology, entities and relations in a software system“
(Whitelaw, 2005).
So, who is going to benefit from this work?
Maybe, a flipbook startup would not be profitable.
Nor it would it be a special platform for collective
exchanges of origami-designs, not even when backdrop-
14
ping on vernacular-enhancing distributors
of live-printing generative patterns on washi-paper.
I would mainly point to methods, as in these days
various arguments are made to bring middle-school
students the light of procedural thinking, digital
literacy and other technologically-based practices.
In my view, teaching art could reveal itself
to be useful to produce a generation of happy, noma-
dic-educated, post-digital citizen.
... Education. Designers often get there. How did you?
Partly because of the desire of modernist-based art
schools to be relevant to society, partly because
of La buona scuola (Italian government, 2015),
a document which brought me to reflect about the will
to include computational skills in. This task inti-
midated me. At that point, I remembering a caustic
quote on self-set evangelical missions from a book
by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk:
“[...] advantage-bringers in the Modern Age includes
conquerors, discoverers, researchers, priests, entre-
preneurs, politicians, artists, teachers, designers,
journalists — all of them supported by their own
advisers and outfitters. Without exception, these
factions dress their practices in manic assignments,
that is to say secular missions. They constantly at-
tempt to close their depressive gaps and clear away
their doubts by insuring themselves through the ser-
vices of paid motivators. These are meant to show
them ways to become a modern subject, that is to say
a rationally motivated perpetrator” (Sloterdijk, 2006).
Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Com-puter Science and Department Head, Computer Science Department, Car-
negie Mellon University, USA speaks during the Session ‘An insight, an idea with Jeannette Wing’ at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2013.
15
Thus, I abandoned the idea to craft a rounded
representation of our world, realizing that maybe
Harry Potter couldn’t be the correct source
to inspire scientific researches.
You retained a loose sense of narrative and decided to carve out a picture on com-puting, networks and digitized information on products, ambitious!
These days, artists and scholars are discussing digi-
tal media using the term of code as performativity;
contemporary culture seems to be strongly influenced
by this idea of doing things. In line with this,
I decided to craft object with the help programming
languages. These could be directly linked to this
idea, which is often referred to as performativity.
Evidence can be found with regard to what are
usually called programming paradigms. Imperative
programming is probably the eldest:
“In computer science terminologies, imperative
programming is a programming paradigm that describes
computation in terms of statements that change
a program state. In much the same way that the impe-
rative mood in natural languages expresses commands
to take action, imperative programs define sequences
of commands for the computer to perform”. (Wikipedia,
as accessed on 24-06-2015)
A later one, more compatible with the practice
I am going to discuss is functional programming.
It allows programmers to instanciate objects and
classes, which are collections of data and methods.
R E A D _ M E ,
R U N _ M E , E X E C U T E _ M E :
S O F T WA R E A N D I T S
D I S C O N T E N T S , O R :
I T ’ S T H E P E R F O R M A -
T I V I T Y O F C O D E ,
S T U P I D1
(Arns, 2004)
16
Many commercial applications are already making use
of it extensively, e.g. those used for accounting
practices.
I think this idea might already be at work in other places... I have this copy of a book by a French sociologist...
Academic theories seem to be kept up to date with
these ideas. Recently, I saw a book by an author
I had been reading with regards to videogames.
Its sub-heading was: What it’s like to be a thing.
The aim of text was to conceive OOO: an Object-Orien-
ted Ontology, which is to say, in the words of the
author, a theory that “puts things at the center
of being.” as, “we humans are elements, but not the
sole elements, of philosophical interest. OOO contends
that nothing has special status, but that everything
exists equally — plumbers, cotton, bonobos, DVD
players, and sandstone, for example. In contemporary
thought, things are usually taken either as the aggre-
gation of ever smaller bits (scientific naturalism)
or as constructions of human behavior and society
(social relativism)“ (Bogost, 2012).
Recent projects by artist and designers concerned
themselves with entities such as bots, semi-autono-
mous systems, swarm-like behaviours and a stockpile
of other ideas. Enfoldment and infinity: an Islamic
genealogy of New Media art provide us with a descrip-
tion of the origin of such works in the early XX
century: “Artists began to focus on how image unfolds
from information — or refuses to unfold. The site
of interaction with the world became not the eye but
The cover now has a heavily-inked front which reveals an inscription
reciting: “I’m a thing; but, haven’t I still the right to be happy?“
Pop-internet culture has also spawned similar projects: Twitchplayspokemon
and Fishplayspokemon are two of these. A transcript of what happened within the frame of the first case can be
found under Materials.
17
Statement after Swiss public prose-cutor seized and sealed work “Random Darknet Shopper” (2014) by !Medien-gruppe Bitnik https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r/2015-01-15-statement/
Website selling drawings obtained through the trails of well-renowned enemies from a videogame saga. The current price per work, as accessed on 21.06.2015 is 0.40882974 BTC.
http://nonhumans.net/
18
the brain. [...] The performative act of unfolding
became the subject of art. [...] This unfolding was
often explicitly algorithmic well before computers
entered art-making. John Ruskin had already pronoun-
ced the algorithmic structures of nature to be the
most beautiful: he drew an algorithmic tree in 1958
and a logarithmic acanthus leaf in 1850. In the ear-
ly twentieth century, Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and
Theo van Doesburg are forebears of an algorithmic art
practice in which the image is the result of a set
of calculations“ (Marks, id.).
The abstraction of matter implemented by digital
means brought me to rethink art theory. Particularly,
I rekindled my interest for relationality.
Relational art is a form of art that, after the
historical dematerialization of the work of art,
abandoned the production of images as well.
In other words: “Relational art brings to its apex
the performativity of art that produces no image, art
whose meaning consists entirely in the act
of unfolding, here understood as an entirely social
act“ (Marks, id.).
A point from which many artistic lines de-parted!
It didn’t start with people sending letters,
or through the digitally-structured lists we call
“the internet”: there has been a shift long before the
advent of digital networks. And what could make
us think is the fact that indexes relating to each
other is a mean through which databases are working,
Marcel Duchamp, La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même
(1915-1923)
Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970/2003)
19
along with the matter of discussion: algorithms.
In other words, Western artistic language pivoted
on indexicality as artists abandoned the pursue for
a mimetic representation of reality, which had
already been achieved by mechanical means, in favour
of formal or political art, thus either creating one’s
own world or attempting to actively change the one
we live in. The root of the diverse cases
of design-art schools sprouting from modernist ide-
als could ve found inbetween these poles. Anchoring
disciplines to their context, those institutions
often committed themselves to an idea of utopianism
of social responsibility.
It was at the point of these reflections that I came
to interrogate myself on the words of an author which
already had been granted a great deal of attention:
Guy Debord. In its Commentaries to the society of the
spectacle, he remarks: “It is not surprising that
children should glibly start their education
at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge
of computer science; while they still do not know how
to read, for reading demands making veritable judg-
ments at every line; and is the only access to the
vast areas of pre-spectacular human experience.
Because conversation is almost dead, and soon so too
will be many of those who knew how to speak” (Debord,
1989).
“Conversation”. Would he have considered bots a Zombi-invasion?
...
Photo of Guy Debord taken from a see-mingly destroyed film(1952)
20
But you are right if you are saying apocalyptics
and luddism could preclude us possibilities
in communicating. There could be the case of the Bu-
reau d’études, a graphic design studio producing po-
litically-engaged synoptic tables. In an intervention
of theirs, in a reader named Datasthetics: How to do
things with data, they discuss ideas from Oyvind
Fahlström. They underline the need to engage culture
and technology in an ecological way: “Above all“, they
say, “Fahlström maintained the category of “artist”,
even though his project cut through the professional
identity of symbol-producers“ (Wright, 2006). He en-
visioned “the creation of a system of “alternative,
autonomous distribution“ and worked with various
political movements“ (Wright, id.).
The idea of autonomous symbolization, sustained
by horizontally-formed cultural group and defined
from the work of Fahlström as “paintings, maps
and games filled to bursting with precise informa-
tion, analyzing the social, economic and political
situations of the present [...] initially produced for
museums and collectors” which “gradually put a foot
outside and gained in autonomy“ (Wright, 2006), could
recall Otto Neurath’s project Isotype. The Viennese
social scientist and philosopher, “saw that the
proletariat, which until then had been virtually illi-
terate, were emancipating, stimulated by socialism.
For their advancement, they needed knowledge of the
world around them. This knowledge should not be shri-
ned in opaque scientific language, but directly illu-
strated in straightforward images and a clear structu-
re, also for people who could not, or hardly, read.
Another outspoken goal of this method of visual
Pictograms designed by Gerd Arntz for the Isotype pictographic language
(1928-1965)
“Cartography of contemporary political, social and economic systems. Revealing what normally remains invisible and contextualising apparently separate elements within a bigger whole, these visualizations of interests and cooperations
re-symbolize the unseen and hidden.” In this page: Autonomies et luttes, Bureau d’Etudes, 2012from: http://bureaudetudes.org/category/ou-suis-je/
22
statistics was to overcome barriers of language
and culture, and to be universally understood” (http://
www.gerdarntz.org/, as accessed on 25-06-2015).
A similarly emancipative project was submitted to the
International Union of Architects at their 7th Con-
gress in London in July, 1961 by Buckminster Fuller.
What was informally referred to as the World peace
game, was evidently the opposite of the work to whi-
ch Debord dedicated himself after abandoning film-ma-
king: the Kriegspiel. Which has been described
by Alexander Galloway as “a ‘juridico-geometric’
algorithm, that is, at the level of a finite set
of rules that, when executed, result in a machine able
to simulate political antagonism” (Galloway, 2009).
Since original computers were people making calcula-
tion, algorithms were made to handle mathematics.
Through statistics and data we are now used to make
inferences on how events could unfold. A game exists
on this, which probably retains a stronger theoreti-
cal background: John Conway’s Game of life. Created
in 1970, it is based on cellular automaton and
it allows the player to set the initial state for
a game, which will then evolve under set conditions.
This mathematical object, conceptually near to simu-
lations, is often referred to as a 0-player game.
Games of this kind require extra-diegetic acts
to proceed. Alexander Galloway, in Gaming: essays
on algorithmic culture, states that “acts of configu-
ration are a rendering of life: the transformation
into an information economy in the United States
since the birth of video games as a mass medium
in the 1970s has precipitated massive upheavals in the
Software — Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art catalogue (“Computers are not what you think”), 1970
24
lives of individuals submitted to a process of retrai-
ning and redeployment into a new economy mediated
by machines and other informatic artifacts. [...] The
new “general equivalent” of information has changed
the way culture is created and experienced. The same
quantitative modulations and numerical valuations
required by the new information worker are thus
observed in a dazzling array of new cultural phenome-
na, from the cut-up sampling culture of hip-hop
to the calculus curves of computer-aided architectural
design. In short, to live today is to know how
to use menus” (Galloway, 2006).
Moving along algorithmic structures is not something
automatically achieved, one has to become used
to it. Thinking as a computer scientist would, has
been renamed as computational thinking. The term has
been used firstly by Seymour Papert in 1980 to de-
scribe a process that generalizes a solution
to open-ended problems, encouraging answers based
on multiple variables, requiring the use of decompo-
sition, data representation, generalization, mode-
ling, and algorithms. This phrase sparked the inte-
rest of a broader audience since Jeannette Wing
suggested that thinking computationally was a funda-
mental skill for everyone, not just for computer
scientists.
Processing is a simplified programming language whi-
ch since its creation has gathered a strong communi-
ty, in a similar fashion to the Arduino project, with
which it retains affinities. The project aims
to encourage “visual people“ to learn programming.
In a conference held in San Diego, one of the initia-
The freelancer figure as expressed by the streets of Bolzano
(2013)
25
Software — Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art catalogue (1970)
tors of the project, Casey Reas, described its moti-
vation as follows: “the complexity of our culture,
and of the world, requires the type of thinking that
programming enables. And by that, I mean, we need our
designers, artist and architects to think in terms
of models and simulations. We need to be able
to think and build system rather than a set of fixed
relationships or objects, they need to be able to
grasp analyze tackle difficult complex systems. They
need to be able to break them into smaller manage-
abler pieces in order to understand them, and they
need to build relational machines rather of single
instances of an object or of an idea. I have been
interested in every subject. The Processing project,
which spawned a programming language which is now
commonly used by graphic and interaction designers,
but that could be used as a generic tool to teach
programming” (Reas, 2012).
Operating as an artist, he received with Processing
a Nica prize at Ars Electronica in 2004,
and is well-aware of the genealogy behind the means
behind this kind of art-practices. In said talk
he acknoledges both an inheritance from pioneers
such as Frieder Nake or Georg Nees and from post-mi-
nimal artist Sol Lewitt. To him an explicit reference
is made in a work commissioned by the Whitney Museum
of Modern Art. A description on the website recites:
“Inspired by Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, {Software}
Structures explores the relevance of conceptual art
to the idea of software as art. Casey Reas created
three unique structures—text descriptions outlining
dynamic relations between elements — which were then
Sol Lewitt, A six-inch (15 cm) grid covering a red ceiling (1975)
26
implemented: twenty-six pieces of software derived
from the textual structures were coded to isolate dif-
ferent components, including interpretation, material,
and process” (whitney.org/Exhibitions/Artport/Commis-
sions/SoftwareStructures, as accessed on 25-06-2016).
Textual descriptions and words were primary materials
for many artist within the range of Conceptualist
practices. An often-cited antecedent of such practice
is that of Moholy-Nagy’s telephone-paintings, descri-
bed in his writing Abstract of an artist: “In 1922,
I ordered by telephone from a sign factory 5 paintin-
gs in porcelain enamel. I had the factory’s color
chart before me and I sketched my paintings on graph
paper. At the other end of the telephone, the factory
supervisor had the same kind of paper, divided into
squares. He took down the dictated shapes in the cor-
rect position. (It was like playing chess by corre-
spondence). Thus, these pictures did not have the
virtue of the “individual touch,” but my action was
directed exactly against his overemphasis. I often
hear the criticism that because of this want of the
individual touch, my pictures are intellectual”
(Moholy-Nagy, 1947).
A systematization of such means, evidently pre-dating
modern computing, is described in the book The al-
phabet and the algorithm. Mario Carpo reviews the
analogic digitization that Leon Battista Alberti con-
ceived to describe the city of Rome around 1450.
The episode could advise us on the relocation
of skills, instead of just on their abolishment.
As Aarold Cohen pointed in his paper Parallel
to perception: “The real power, the real magic, which
László Moholy-Nagy, Telefonbild Em 2 (1922)
Richard Serra, Verb List (1967-68)
27
Xavier Proulx, instrument to recon-struct Rome as descripted by Leon Bat-tista Alberti in his book Descriptio Urbis Romae (~1450)
remains still in the hands of the elite, rests not
in the making of images, but in the conjuring
of meaning. And I use the word meaning in a sense
broad enough to cover not only the semantic content
of the image itself, but all that is involved
in the making of the image“ (Cohen, 1973).
Artworks started to rely on allographic means
and documentations, beside conventional ones adfir-
ming their presence through the erasement of affects,
of expressivity and intentionality. Digital literacy
misty promise is that of spreading the means to ma-
nipulate the pieces of information supposedly consti-
tuting our modern world.
Ok. You say we should articulate a culture as natives instead of being colonized?
We should try to learn about edible fruit, toxic ber-
ries and the tools we are using in this, let me say,
jungle, or, as Henry Jenkins formulates, “shift in the
ways we think about our relations to media,
that we are making that shift first through our rela-
tions with popular culture, but that the skills
we acquire through play may have implications
for how we learn, work, participate in the political
process, and connect with other people around
the world” (Jenkins, 2006).
During a talk at Re:publica 2012, Eben Moglen points
out the need of having free media, supported by free
technology, to preserve what our society had strived
for in the century: free thought. After having evoked
the dramatic scenario in which he claims we find our-
28
selves, he set the image of a liberated use of tech-
nology in which “everywhere on Earth everybody will
be able to read freely, all the Einsteins in the stre-
ets will be able to learn, because all the Stravinskys
will become composers, because humanity will be con-
nected and every brain will be allowed to learn
and no brain will be crushed for thinking wrong.” (Mo-
glen, 2012).
Wiki-initiatives, and educational projects
such as the Khan academy, Monoskop or libraries
as Aaaaarg are fueling a debate on feasible ways
to create such an electronically-enhanced school.
These technologies could be bringing the etymological
mean of a place for people to learn in one’s free
time to resurface. Along this view, we could assume,
the role of educators is going to shift, as I myself
have already experienced. Recently, an article appe-
ared in occasion of the 56th Venice Biennale which
could help clarify this change. Advocating a revision
in art-thinking the author writes:
“Art, it’s true, cannot be taught under the anachroni-
stic and inefficient definition of teaching as transfe-
rence of information. It is this definition that
Gropius probably had in mind, and what he didn’t re-
alize at the time is that nothing can be taught.
Rather, like everything else, art can be learned under
stimulating conditions that facilitate autodidacticism
—the crucial ingredient in any kind of learning—
and that should force us to rethink education
in general. “Learn how to learn” is still a good phra-
se, and it is an underlying notion that covers art
as well” (Camnitzer, 2015).
Monoskop is a wiki for collaborative studies of the arts, media
and humanities.
29
Conclusion please. I’m exhausted...
To give an end to this theoretical array of ideas,
I want to make the turn-point of the thesis clear.
After having consulted La buona scuola, an Italian
governmental document, where the author included
digital literacy, computational thinking and finan-
cial knowledge among the set of skills students
of the future should be able to grasp, I decided
to explore the means through which this comprehen-
sion should be reached. In the thesis-work Imparare
il pensiero computazionale, imparare a programmare
(Lodi, 2013) the author surveys several psycho-peda-
gogical notions, obstacles which should be known and
surpassed, along dealing with actual methods to im-
plement a successful learning experience. I suggest
that the readers consider the projectual propositions
described to be understood as tools to exemplify
(the hypogeums), to be decomposed and remixed (flip-
books and origami patterned-paper), or to provide
trans-disciplinar means to engage “visual” people,
which would have little interest in learning mathe-
matical concepts.
... pilgrimaging in a land of pixels.
If you are loaded with money and want to found
a startup...
A series of flipbooks compendiating a succession of cinematographic ap-
pearances of electronic media.
A tribute to Aaron Swartz, activist and dweller, to inspire a reflection
on ‘the’ internet and its use.
33
As a kid I had a book where to write down mythologic
figures, mathematical concepts and historical even-
ts I read about on Wikipedia. Those were probably
the years passed exploring the computer-graphics
of fantastic worlds and videogame enemies’ territories
to insinuate into, which made me prone to this kind
of pipe-dreaming activity. I am sure I am still
recovering from the damages of this wasteful activity:
my brain will probably never recover. But, if it
true that worst always happens, then we can expect
it to arrive either with the white-and-blue wings
of Sylicon Valley cut-throat multinational world-cor-
porations, or with the banner of self-developed
and self-sustained white-bro-mysoginist-NEET-grassro-
ot culture.
I am still not sure if, with regards to media,
it is naive to discuss contents, but perspective
I particularly trust these days is that content (“in-
formation”) does not exist until it becomes mate-
The pirates of the Silicon Valley, film still (1999)
Banner from the Italian-language imageboard Diochan
34
rialized with human practices. On the other side,
cold-blooded technicians of culture —seeking to an-
ticipate masses on their desires— treat contents
as green pastures.
The digital revolution or whatever other name you’d
give to the seachange in our attitude towards com-
puting, has been an elaborate and complex pro-
cess of seduction. It has been sold less on a re-
asoned assessment of the potential of networking,
than on the strength of a powerful and attractive
complex of images. (Kunzru, 1996)
In any case, contents allow practices. Ted Friedman,
devoting his book Electric dreams: Computers in Ame-
rican Culture to an extensive analysis on representa-
tion of computers, gives an explanation:
There can be no consumption without production.
Consumer response, in turn, influences future
production. Identity depends on the process
of representation, which depends on both the pro-
duction and consumption of signs. Regulation
determines the institutional structures which
constrain and define all the processes,
while those processes may in turn reshape
regulatory practices. (Friedman, 2005)
The story of Aaron Swartz, the programmer and acti-
vist behind RSS (Rich Site Summary), is known in con-
nection with the reshaping of regulatory practices.
I didn’t know at the time, but the web feed format
called RSS I used extensively was created by him.
Panel from the storyboard from the Macintosh 1984-spot by Ripley Scott
Poster for The internet’s own boy, do-cumentary (2014)
35
In The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)
the course of his life, retraced curiosity
and enthusiasm is documented, his work as an acti-
vist, enterpreneur and advocate for a reform
of means of distribution over the internet
is described.
It could seem a silly choice to make a eulo-
gy in form of gimmicky flipbooks, but I meant
it to be factured with the similar bits he manipulated.
Ultimately, this has been a trial in learning
to manipulate medial texts and to use them techno-
logically. The idea was derived from an Italian duo
of graphic designers, Federico Antonini and Ales-
sio D’Ellena, playfully dealing with a paper-reme-
diation of blank books, originally found in Francois
Truffaut’s film-adaptation of the novel Fahrenheit
451.
AN APPLICATION
An algorithm was developed to divide videos into
frames, and to bring those together into a file
to be printed. Furthermore, a typeface
for the titles was created, hinting to parametrical-
ly-controlled typographical means, that is something
we could expect to see on our future-screens.
Federico Antonini & Alessio D’Ellena, The Guy Montag flip-book (2013)
37
import processing.pdf.*;import processing.video.*;Movie myMovie;
boolean registra=false;
int nome;String film0=”1957 - Desk Set.mov”;String film1=”1965 - Alphaville.mov”;String film2=”1968 - Space odyssey.mov”;String film3=”1983 - Ghost dance.mov”;String film4=”1983 - Wargames.mov”;String film5=”1984 - 2084.mov”;String film6=”1984 - Electric dreams.mov”;String film7=”1995 - Excel Saga.mov”; String film8=”2002 - Remind me.mov”;String film9=”2013 - Her.mov”;String quale=film9;
int quantiFrame=400;int inizio=333;
void setup() { size(1920/5, 1080/5); frameRate(18); myMovie = new Movie(this, quale); myMovie.loop();} void mousePressed(){ if(registra==false){ registra=true;}else{ registra=true; myMovie.noLoop(); }}
void draw() { image(myMovie, 0,0,1920/5, 1080/5); if((frameCount>=inizio)&&(frameCount<=inizio+quantiFra-me)){ nome+=1; saveFrame(quale+nome+”.jpg”);} //saveFrame(quale+frameCount+”.jpg”);} println(frameCount);}
// Called every time a new frame is available to readvoid movieEvent(Movie m) { m.read();}
A further step in automation could be made here, as I wrote each time the scene I was splitting
38
import processing.pdf.*;
int countFilm=0;float latoX=(1754/297)*112.5;int latoY=(1240/210)*45;int pagine=400;PImage img;int nome;String quale;PImage[] anno=new PImage[10];PImage[] numero=new PImage[10];String[]film= { “1968 - Space odyssey.mov”, “1983 - Ghost dance.mov”, “1983 - Wargames.mov”, “1984 - 2084.mov”, “1984 - Electric dreams.mov”, “1995 - Excel Saga.mov”, “2002 - Remind me.mov”, “2013 - Her.mov”};
void setup() { size(1240, 1754, PDF, “provaflipbooks1.pdf”); for (int i=0; i<anno.length; i+=1) { anno[i]=loadImage(“anno”+i+”.jpg”); numero[i]=loadImage(“numero”+i+”.jpg”); }}
void draw() {
for (int i=20; i<width-50; i+=latoX+20) { for (int j=20; j<height-100; j+=latoY+20) { formato(film[countFilm], i, j); if (countFilm<9) { countFilm++; }else{ countFilm=0;}
} }
PGraphicsPDF pdf = (PGraphicsPDF) g; // Get the renderer pdf.nextPage(); // Tell it to go to the next page countFilm=0; if (frameCount == pagine) { exit(); }}
void formato(String quale, int x, int y) { rectMode(CORNER); fill(0); //stroke(0); img=loadImage(quale+frameCount+”.jpg”); rect(x, y, latoX, latoY); img.resize(0, latoY); image(img, x+latoX-img.width, y); strokeWeight(5); line(x+latoX-img.width,y,x+latoX,y); line(x+latoX-img.width,y+latoY,x+latoX,y+latoY); anno[countFilm].resize(int(latoX-img.width), pagine); numero[countFilm].resize(int(latoX-img.width), pagine); strokeWeight(1);
A better formatting and commenting could be made, increasing readabili-ty and having in mind the possibili-
ty to reuse the code.
39
// rectMode(CENTER); fill(255); noStroke(); for (int i = 0; i < anno[countFilm].width; i++) { color colore1=anno[countFilm].get(i,400-frameCount); color colore2=numero[countFilm].get(i,frameCount); if(colore1!=-1){ rect(x+i,y+latoY,3,15); } if(colore2!=-1){ rect(x+i,y,3,30); } } }
40
void lettera(char quale, int posX, int posY, color colore) {
switch(quale){ case ‘0’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc); //LINEA DIAGONALE //line(0+xDim/3, 0+yDim/2,0,0+yDim/5); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0, 0-maiusc, 0, 0+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA rectMode(CENTER); noStroke(); fill(colore); rect(xDim/2, yDim/4, xDim/6, yDim/4); stroke(colore); noFill(); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA //line(0,0+yDim/3,0+xDim,0+yDim/3); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); //LINEA ORIZZONTALE BASSA line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘1’: line(0+xDim/1.7, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim/1.7, 0+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line( 0+xDim/1.7, 0-maiusc, 0, 0); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘2’: //LINEA SINISTRA VERTICALE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0, 0-maiusc+yDim/4); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc+yDim/3); // LINEA DIAGONALE line( 0+xDim, 0-maiusc+yDim/3, 0, 0+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘3’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc); // LINEA DIAGONALE line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim/2, 0+yDim/4); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE line(0+xDim/2, 0+yDim/4, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/4); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0+yDim/4, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘4’: // LINEA VERTICALE line(0+(xDim/5)*3.5, 0-maiusc, 0+(xDim/5)*3.5, 0+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE line(0, 0+yDim/2, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/2); // LINEA DIAGONALE line(0+(xDim/5)*3.5, 0-maiusc, 0, 0+yDim/2);
break;
41
case ‘5’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim-xDim/4, 0-maiusc); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0, 0-maiusc, 0, 0+yDim/5); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(0, 0+yDim/5, 0+xDim-xDim/3, 0+yDim/5); //LINEA DIAGONALE line(0+xDim-xDim/3, 0+yDim/5, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/3); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0+yDim/3, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); //LINEA ORIZZONTALE BASSA line(0+xDim/7, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim);
break;
case ‘6’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim-xDim/4, 0-maiusc); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0, 0-maiusc, 0, 0+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(0, 0+yDim/5, 0+xDim-xDim/3, 0+yDim/5); //LINEA DIAGONALE line(0+xDim-xDim/3, 0+yDim/5, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/3); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0+yDim/3, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); //LINEA ORIZZONTALE BASSA line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘7’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc+yDim/4); // LINEA DIAGONALE line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc+yDim/4, 0+xDim/4, 0+yDim); break; case ‘8’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0+xDim/5, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim-xDim/5, 0-maiusc); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0+xDim/5, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim/5, 0+yDim/8); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim-xDim/5, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim-xDim/5, 0+yDim/8); // LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(0+xDim-xDim/5, 0+yDim/8, 0, 0+yDim/2); //LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(0+xDim/5, 0+yDim/8, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/2); //LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0, 0+yDim/2, 0, 0+yDim); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0+yDim/2, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); //LINEA ORIZZONTALE BASSA line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break; case ‘9’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(0, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0-maiusc); //LINEA DIAGONALE //line(0+xDim/3, 0+yDim/2,0,0+yDim/5); // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(0, 0-maiusc, 0, 0+yDim/3); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(0, 0+yDim/3, 0+xDim, 0+yDim/3); //LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(0+xDim, 0-maiusc, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); //LINEA ORIZZONTALE BASSA line(0, 0+yDim, 0+xDim, 0+yDim); break;
42
//carriage Return case ‘.’: fill(0); noStroke(); rect(posX, posY+yDim, punto, punto); stroke(colore); break;
case ‘¥’: riga+=1; letterCount=0; break; case ‘—’: line(posX, posY+yDim/2,posX+xDim, posY+yDim/2); break; case ‘,’: fill(0); noStroke(); rect(posX+xDim/4, posY+yDim, punto, punto*2); stroke(colore);
break; case ‘a’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘b’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); //ANGOLO TRA QUI line(posX, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY); line(posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); //E QUI line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+y-Dim); //line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adju-stxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘c’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘d’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); //ANGOLO TRA QUI line(posX, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY); line(posX+xDim/2, posY, posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjusty-Dim); //E QUI line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+y-Dim); break;
43
case ‘e’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘f’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); //ANGOLO TRA QUI line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); //E QUI line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); //line(0,yDim,xDim,yDim); break; case ‘g’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim/2); line(posX+xDim, posY+yDim/2, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2); break; case ‘h’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘i’: line(posX+xDim/2, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); line(posX+adjustxDim, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘l’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
case ‘m’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+0, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘n’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY/*+adjustyDim*/, posX+xDim, posY+yDim/2); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘o’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
44
case ‘p’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY); break; case ‘q’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim/2+adjustxDim, posY+yDim+adjustyDim, posX+x-Dim/2+adjustxDim, posY+yDim-adjustyDim); break; case ‘r’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX+xDim/2+adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘s’: line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+y-Dim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adjustx-Dim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘t’: line(posX+xDim/2, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); break;
case ‘u’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘v’: line(posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); break; case ‘z’: line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
45
case ‘w’: line(posX+adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX, posY); line(posX+adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2); line(posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+y-Dim/2); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘y’: line(posX, posY, posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+(yDim/2)+adjustyDim); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+(y-Dim/2)+adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim/2, posY+(yDim/2)+adjustyDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); break; case ‘j’: line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX+(xDim/2)+adjustxDim, posY, posX+(xDim/2)+adjustx-Dim, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+(xDim/2)+adjustxDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘k’: line(posX, posY, posX, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+(xDim/2)-adjustx-Dim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+(xDim/2)-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY); line(posX+(xDim/2)-adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
case ‘x’: line(posX, posY, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY, posX, posY+yDim); break; case ‘A’: //ASTA SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); //LINEA SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); //LINEA DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA DIAGONALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustxDim); break; case ‘B’: // ASTA SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA SUPERIORE DESTRA line(posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustx-Dim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA MEDIA line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA INFERIORE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+y-Dim);
46
//line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adju-stxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘C’: // LINEA SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
case ‘D’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY-maiusc); // DIAGONALE line(posX+xDim/2, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘E’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adju-stxDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); // lINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘F’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adju-stxDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘G’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+yDim/2); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+yDim/2, posX+xDim/2, posY-maiu-sc+yDim/2); break;
47
case ‘H’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘I’: // LINEA VERTICALE line(posX+xDim/2, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX+adjustxDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘L’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘M’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2-adjusty-Dim); // LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2-adju-styDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
case ‘N’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA DIAGONALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc/*+adjustyDim*/, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+y-Dim/2); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘O’: //LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘P’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA
48
line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); break; case ‘Q’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEETTA line(posX+xDim/2+adjustxDim, posY+yDim+adjustyDim, posX+x-Dim/2+adjustxDim, posY+yDim-adjustyDim);
break; case ‘R’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(y-Dim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA DIAGONALE line(posX+xDim/2+adjustxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘S’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX, posY-maiusc); // lINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-a-djustyDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // line(posX+xDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim-adju-stxDim, posY+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); break; case ‘T’: // LINEA VERTICALE line(posX+xDim/2, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); break; case ‘U’: line(posX, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘V’: // LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); //LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim); break;
49
case ‘Z’: line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX, posY+yDim); line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break;
case ‘W’: //LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(posX+adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX, posY-maiusc); //LINEA DIAGONALE MINORE SINISTRA line(posX+adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2); //LINEA DIAGONALE MINORE DESTRA line(posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+yDim, posX+xDim/2, posY+yDim/2); //LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim-adjustxDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘Y’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA VERTICALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-a-djustyDim); //LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim/2, posY/*-maiusc*/+(yDim/2)+adjustyDim); //LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+xDim/2, posY/*-maiusc*/+(yDim/2)+adjustyDim); //LINEA VERTICALE line(posX+xDim/2, posY/*-maiusc*/+(yDim/2)+adjustyDim, posX+x-Dim/2, posY+yDim); break; case ‘J’: // LINEA ORIZZONTALE SUPERIORE line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA VERTICALE line(posX+(xDim/2)+adjustxDim, posY-maiusc, posX+(xDim/2)+a-djustxDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE INFERIORE line(posX, posY+yDim, posX+(xDim/2)+adjustxDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘K’: // LINEA VERTICALE SINISTRA line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX, posY+yDim); // LINEA ORIZZONTALE MEDIA line(posX, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim, posX+(xDim/2)-a-djustxDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjustyDim); // LINEA DIAGONALE SUPERIORE line(posX+(xDim/2)-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjusty-Dim, posX+xDim, posY-maiusc); // LINEA DIAGONALE INFERIORE line(posX+(xDim/2)-adjustxDim, posY-maiusc+(yDim/2)-adjusty-Dim, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); break; case ‘>’:line(posX,posY+yDim/2,posX+xDim,posY+yDim/2);line(posX+xDim/2,posY+yDim/4,posX+xDim,posY+yDim/2);line(posX+xDim/2,posY+yDim-yDim/4,posX+xDim,posY+yDim/2); break; case ‘X’: // LINEA DIAGONALE DESTRA line(posX, posY-maiusc, posX+xDim, posY+yDim); // LINEA DIAGONALE SINISTRA line(posX+xDim, posY-maiusc, posX, posY+yDim); break;}}
52
A redesign of the mathematical puzz-le named Towers of Hanoi, which
is often used as an example in teaching programming.
In this version the orientation of the game has been redirected
through the introduction of a ca-se-structure. This modification al-
lows a clearer understanding of the solution for the game and provides
the player with a clearer view on its working.
53
In Valis, one of the last books he wrote, sci-fi
writer Philip K. Dick imagined a future where the
Roman Empire never ended. The years the writer lived
in, were those sanctioning the definitive deflagration
of openly-biased accounts of history. In these years,
crucial developments in information technology were
made, and we are now finding ourselves on a continent
running on milliseconds, built with semi-conductors
and logic.
Scientific divulgation and science-fiction often went
hand-in-hand, spurting visions of the future more
or less acclaimed as futurology. It could seem the
time of auspici and aruspicina has never passed.
If it did little to impress older generations, a pub-
lic of avid readers was intrigued by tales on the
edge between science and magic.
A tidier part of this non-homogenous public has
been stimulated by - to cite one among many - Pu-
54
litzer prize winning non-fiction Gödel, Escher, Bach:
an eternal golden braid (1979), by Douglas Hofstadter.
On the other side of the spectrum, one may
find young occultist practitioners turned com-
ic-book authors or, venturing even further,
pioneers of rave culture, with their appreciation of
fractals, David Böhm and quantum physics.
This roboant richness of views might explain that
mathematics and logic are not to the cold-blood-
ed, starvingly-boring subjects that many learners
reputethem to be. Or, at least, why people have
the urge to understand such concepts. Physical
assemblages are often used in science divulgation:
an historical case for designers of such a use could
be the Mathematica: A world of numbers… and beyond
exhibition, designed in 1961 by Eames’ studio.
On the other hand, explanatory objects can lie
abandoned on shelves until curious guests to make
their discovery. This is what happened to me with
the Towers of Hanoi. But, as serendipity on herself
isn’t enough to make a design-project, I had to wait
until reading a thick manual on algorithm design
and computer science, in which the witted author,
between a biblical quote and a diagram, described
the mathematical game while telling the Hindu-legend
behind it.
In the dedicated Wikipedia entry: “The puzzle was
invented by the French mathematician Édouard Lucas
in 1883. There is a story about an Indian temple
in Kashi Vishwanath which contains a large room with
three time-worn posts in it surrounded by 64 gold-
Youtube video in which Dan Burns explains his space-time warping demo at a PTSOS workshop at Los Gatos High
School, on March 10, 2012.
Mathematica: A World of Numbers... and Beyond as exhibited at California Museum of Science and Industry (1980)
55
en disks. Brahmin priests, acting out the command
of an ancient prophecy, have been moving these
disks, in accordance with the immutable rules
of the Brahma, since that time. The puzzle is therefore
also known as the Tower of Brahma puzzle. According
to the legend, when the last move of the puzzle will
be completed, the world will end. It is not clear
whether Lucas invented this legend or was inspired
by it.”
Crunching incommensurability by computing
is an idea which gained popularity during
the last half century. Douglas Adams, Isaac Aasimov
and William Gibson, whose writing probably shared
little more than a sci-fi setting, depicted the world
as a planetary experiment composed of information.
Without getting to Democritus, one could think that
this idea was already there with mechanicistic views
on physics such as those by Pierre-Simon Laplace.
Next to this digital transmogrification of the sub-
lime, outdated tools for turistic vision went lending
their name to successful TV series, and commentators
are making a whole Romantic vocabulary resurrecting,
proposing us indie-game developers as newly-found
authors, either dealing with expressionist peaks
of intimacy, or straining to foster social conscious-
ness. Along this, videogames are turning their back
to theatricality, montage and attractions, being re-
directed towards smooth, meditative and atmospheric
experiences. However, not being confident with those
means, I ultimately resolved to (♫) get physical.
Douglas Edric Stanley, analyzing in his article Exhausting Gameplay, videogames experimenting with uncon-vential gameplays, reveals the essence of videogames as logical machines:
“Most of the time, the author as well as player are simply trying to unlock a series of boolean switches in the right combination, in order to advance to the next chapter of the story, i.e. the next set of boolean switches in the code. While puzzles are inte-resting in and of themselves, and can indeed contain interesting opportuni-ties for storytelling, in the case of interactive narratives we seem more to be playing with the machinic structure that made the story possible, than the story itself”. (Edric, 2012)
Jason Rohrer, Passage (2007),Thatgamecompany, The Journey (2012), David O’Reilly, Mountain (2015)
56
REDESIGN
I understood a player first approaching the game
could get confused from the original orientation.
Thus, the object was redesigned reversing the orien-
tation and making the anatomy of the object clearer,
as I thought this could help concentrate on the
moves necessary to solve the game. In Hypogeums,
the original rule that a larger piece cannot
be placed over a small piece, was incorporated into
the structure of the toy: moving a smaller piece over
another will result in the piece not fitting perfectly
into the case-structure.
MEANS OF EXPLANATION
Why did the above-mentioned witty author use the tow-
ers in his books as an example to explain algorithms?
Because the solutions that can be found could prove
useful to explain abstract concepts, such as those
of Iteration and Recursion. The first is defined on
Wikipedia as: “the act of repeating a process with
the aim of approaching a desired goal, target or re-
sult. Each repetition of the process is also called
an “iteration”, and the results of one iteration are
used as the starting point for the next iteration”;
whereas the second “is the process of repeat-
ing items in a self-similar way. [...] The most com-
mon application of recursion is in mathematics
and computer science, in which it refers to a meth-
od of defining functions in which the function
being defined is applied within its own definition”.
Technical drawing of a six-piece puzzle.
The detail in the balloon shows how the shape of the pieces alows the puzzle to be removed from the frame by applying pressure to the side of the top piece.
57
a b cx___x_
___
__x
Illustration of the undirected graph representing the longest non-repetitive solution to a three-piece puzzle. The node are representing the distribution
of disks while the edges are representing the moves.
Aside, illustration of a recursive solution to a four-piece puzzle:every piece is moved once a time and its old position is depicted in gray.
58
Mathematically-constructed wooden puzzles variating the original
geometries of Tangram.
These models retain the figures tra-ditionally included in the game.
The variations were achieved through the implementation of an algorithm to generate differentiated 3D-mo-
dels, and using those to digitally manifacture the objectiles.
63
If I were to shipwreck on a lonely island in the mid-
dle of the ocean, with plenty of time, fruits, vegeta-
bles, fresh water, solar radiations; no wifi, pollution
or no bad island-mates; having made sure that I was
not participating in an experiment on bourgeois-sub-
jectivity, I would really be glad of having brought
with me the most complicated book ever printed.
Not impossible to understand, just complicated.
This is something I thought of when I was intro-
duced to the tangram. Its dull geometry made it only
ideal for reducing and abstracting. Thus I decided
to contaminate its geometries. The human-scaled mid-
world we perceive is one which appears to be made
out of compromises, of chances, of imperfections.
“It was while reading about Fludd that I discovered
a startling image. It was from his major work, an am-
bitious, multi-volume, syncretic theory-of-everything
with the cumbersome title The Metaphysical, Physi-
Tangram figures from (Eiffers, 1976)
64
cal, and Technical History of the Two Worlds, the
Major as well as the Minor. Fludd published his
work between 1617 and 1621, and each volume is gen-
erously supplied with diagrams, tables and images.
The image that jumped out at me is quite simple.
In a section discussing the origin of the universe,
Fludd was compelled to speculate on what existed prior
to the universe, which he describes as an empty noth-
ingness, a sort of ‘pre-universe’ or ‘un-universe’.
He chose to represent this with a simple black square.
[...] Looking at it out of context, I find Fludd’s image
indelibly modern, both in its simplicity and its aus-
terity. It was as if Fludd had the intuition that only
a self-negating form of representation would be able
to suggest the nothingness prior to all existence,
an un-creation prior to all creation. And so we get
a ‘colour’ that is not really a colour – a colour that
either negates or consumes all colours. And we get
a square that is not really a square, a box meant
to indicate boundlessness. For the image to work with-
in the context of Fludd’s cosmology, the viewer must
not see the image for what it is – a black square.
The viewer must understand the square as formless-
ness, and the black inside as neither a fullness
nor an emptiness.” (Thacker, 2013)
The tangram, as a game, can be conceived
as a square-contained microcosmos, from which the
imagination of the player can create the images
it wishes. Several images from art-history could
be taken to illustrate the path which, started
from abstraction, developed through self-referenti-
ality and arrived to create self-contained worlds
unfolding in front of a spectator/partecipant.
Page from Robert Fludd’s The Metaphy-sical, Physical, & Technical History
of the Two Worlds (1617-1621)
Kazimir Malevic, Black Square on a White Ground
(1915-1923)
Lygia Clark, Cocoon (1960)
65
As accounted in Earth moves, abstraction is con-
ceived as “the end or the beginning of art
as a sampling of life” (Cache, 1995). This parametric
version of tangram could be termed an exercise
in lame infinity, as it simulates the infinite possibilities
of the world.
The primal source of inspiration for the project
is a book mentioned earlier in this work;
recounting ancient theological theories, as opposed
to scientific conceptions, it outlines that “a crucial
difference between disciplines to keep in mind
is that science discovers or unfolds the material uni-
verse, while mathematics and computer science discover
or unfold abstractions. The infinitely complex
patterns of information are like the infinitely complex
patterns of the universe (for believers, God’s creation);
but information is only a subset of the universe,
and a very tiny one.“ (Marks, id.)
A design genealogy for this parametrized version
of the tangram could be retraced in objects such
as 16 animali (Enzo Mari, 1957) and Oggetti a compo-
sizione auto-condotta (Enzo Mari, 1959).
TECHNICAL MATTERS
Basically, I needed the mathematics to describe lines
on the cartesian axis system, to be able to create
the models to be produced with a computer numerical
controlled system.
“The creative thought process of disco-vering the infinitely Open is rare. It is often simulated. This simulation is what I call lame infinity, a lame term for a dispiriting phenomenon. As i seek to establish a parallel between the art of Islam and the systems-based art of computers, it remains clear that both fascinate because they invite the impossible task of contemplating infinity —a universe innumerable beyond imagi-ning. Islam invokes a qualitative infinity. The infinity of information technology, by contrast, is quantitative. At best it is a ver-sion of the mathematcal sublime, in Kant’s term: an infinite that is reached through computation.” Marks, 2012)
Enzo Mari, Oggetto a composizione autocondotta (1959)
66
libraries/controlP5/import controlP5.*;ControlP5 jControl;ControlP5 iControl;ControlP5 kControl;ControlP5 lControl;ControlP5 mControl;// inizializzo le variabili che mi daranno le ascisse dei punti//il programma, date le limitazioni geometriche calcola l’ordinata
float a=400;float b=400;float c=350;float d=450;float e=430;float x=400;
void setup() { size(550,550); smooth(); //inizializzo i controller jControl= new ControlP5(this); iControl= new ControlP5(this); kControl= new ControlP5(this); lControl= new ControlP5(this); mControl= new ControlP5(this); Slider s= jControl.addSlider(“a”, 300, 500, 400, 10, 10, 100, 10); Slider p= iControl.addSlider(“b”, 300, 500, 400, 10, 30, 100, 10); Slider q= jControl.addSlider(“c”, 300, 500, 350, 10, 50, 100, 10); Slider r= jControl.addSlider(“d”, 300, 500, 450, 10, 70, 100, 10); Slider t= jControl.addSlider(“e”, 400, 500, 430, 10, 90, 100, 10);}
void draw() { background(0); // disegno il cubo con la diagonale stroke(255); strokeWeight(1); line(300, 300, 300, 500); line(300, 500, 500, 300); line(300, 300, 500, 300); line(500, 500, 300, 500); line(500, 500, 500, 300); //disegno i punti calcolando l’ordinata dalle limitazioni geome-triche noStroke(); fill(255, 0, 0); ellipse(500, a, 5, 5); ellipse(b, 500, 5, 5); ellipse(c, 800-c, 5, 5); ellipse(d, 800-d, 5, 5); x=((500-b)/(a-500))*e+ b-((500-b)/(a-500))*500; if (x>500){ x=500; } if (e<a){ e=a;} ellipse(x, e, 5, 5); //connetto i punti con linee stroke(255); strokeWeight(1); line(500, a, b, 500); line(500,a , d, 800-d); line(300,300, x,e); line(c, 800-c, x,e); }
This draft of the system was created by Giulio Isacchini. As a decimal er-
ror propagated through multiplication and division the figure resulted sli-
ghtly incorrect. But this step allowed me to understand the mathematics.
86
Creating visual images is a primal mean to explore logical structures
and to introduce people to computer science. Through the creation of de-signs, one can comprehend a number
of concepts, such as that of va-riable and function, data structures such as nested iteration or arrays,
and logical structures.
87
In 2008, engineer and artist Robert Lang presented
a TED talk The math and magic of origami; along the
speech are presented precious thoughts for practica-
lity-oriented design: how and to what purpose could
traditional crafting practices be successfully merged
with technological advancements? How can old techni-
ques bring about new results? Lang’s innovation story
begins with a restless little boy learning maths,
who undertook a journey through ancient Japanese
practices and ended up working for NASA.
The speech underlines the importance of a firm
and encompassing understanding of the subject mat-
ter, holding, however, the ability to keep an open
mind, to play and to explore equally in high regard,
for the purposes of discovery and invention. A central
idea which he appears to retain is that even mat-
ters of significant complexity can be comprehended,
when broken down to an interaction of simple parts.
This is the point, he says, where origami tech-
88
niques find a new purpose, as the principles
of paper folding can be applied to satellites, tran-
sported from earth to the atmosphere through rockets,
or to nano-probes, aiming to undertake their journeys
through bodies.
Praising the reliance on thinking about objects
by analogy, Robert Lang reminds his audience
the importance of embracing ancient solutions,
developed through generations of deceased inventors,
which might nonetheless provide for our needs.
Anyway, the elocution is brough to a real twist
when he demonstrate his astonishingly complex
works: hyperrealistic cockroaches, frogs,
fishes, snakes with a thousand scales, praying man-
tis’ devouring each other and even bass players.
To bring those figure into actual (folded) existance,
he created a software tool to aid his designs.
His artisanal-like mastering of the tools could serve
as a source of inspiration for everyone trying
to gain insights into the actual functioning
of the world.
Technological processes, however, doesn’t seem
to proceed to convey a well-rounded illustration
of the inner workings of the world, even if simple
parts can be organized to study complex behaviours.
An illustrious case is that of the simula-
ted flocking behaviour created with the pro-
gram Boids, by programmer Craig W. Reynolds:
“As with most artificial life simulations, Boids
is an example of emergent behavior; that is, the
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complexity of Boids arises from the interaction
f individual agents (the boids, in this case) adhering
to a set of simple rules” (Wikipedia, as accessed
on 29-06-2015).
Designer and educator Lorenzo Bravi proposed
in his thesis-work Basic design procedures (2007)
a series of exercises to engage programming throu-
gh visual means. This goal lines up with that
of the creators of the Processing progamming language,
which is simplified, but expandable, as to introduce
a broad public to programming, which could even-
tually proceed further, and gain knowledge
to be integrated with what already is known.
A great deal of efforts has been put in what
surrounds Processing. A vast array of refences helps
learners and practitioners to manage with what
they need. This helped a community to gather from
all over the world.
Autodidactism is something often associated with
computer culture, in Casey Reas’ talk to the Cen-
ter for Design and Geopolitics (Reas, Materials)
is retraced a brief history of computing.
Among the other figures, after the Real programmers
MODIFYUSE
TEST
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and the hackers, in his cronology, comes the Amateur.
A well-renowned Italian graphic-design practitioner,
Giovanni Lussu, in his recent book Thebes of the seven,
has expressed himself in favour of autodidactism:
“I am unconditionally in favour of all forms of in-
dividual expressiveness, being convinced that any-
body can profitably engage in them: jam labels,
embroidered table mats, wood engraving, painting for
leisure or for gain, little machines cobbled together
in an amateurish way, as Galileo did as a child,
and also cooking, singing, gardening and the numerous
forms of DIY, and finally posters, leaflets, book co-
vers and trademarks – or “logos”, call them what you
will – which I, too, have done a lot of” (Lussu, 2013).
He describes himself as: “a complete autodidact,
it is Morison and Tschichold whom I consider
to be my real teachers.” (Lussu, 2013)
As learning becomes more and more feasible in di-
stance it becaming clearer that there is the need
of contexts in which to put knowledge into practice.
With this regard I would point to a project, started
in Paris 2010, that is Processing cities. Through this
mean a community gathers in real life which otherwi-
se would have been only electronically connected.
STRUCTURES
The patterns are intended to explore logical structu-
res such as Linear and bilinear arrays, simple
and nested iterations, recursion and object inte-
racting. It draws on the pedagogical mission Casey
Reas expresses in his talk (Reas, Materials).
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Transcription of The Complete History of Twi-tch Plays Pokemon (“Highli-
ghts” and Backstory)
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Hey what’s going on guys this is Patrick here, and this is the complete story of Twitch plays pokemon generation one. So we start day 1 all the
way through to days 16. Hope you guys enjoy.
So our story begins in Pallet town where our main character gets named Red and he acqui-res a Charmender. The name of the Charmander is ABBBBBK or short for AB (?). From there we leave Pallet Town and head over in catch two Ratatat. Now the first one we catch is named JLVWNOOO or more commonly re-ferred to as Jey Leno and the other one does not receive a nickname. We also end up ca-tching a Pidgey, now eventual-ly we make it through Viridian forest to Pure city (?) where we fight Brock and defeat him. Not much information is known on how this happened as there are not many people viewing at this time, but it is known that we did obviously beat Brock. After acquiring our first gym-badge the stream more commonly referred to as the hivemind heads up through tree (?) where they catch a Spearow and then later move on to Mountain Moon where they find a Moonstone and a Nugget but both are quickly tossed after finding. After this we are faced with the choice of the Helix or the Dome fossil. We choose the Helix fossil and it becomes our God figure, that most of the fans worship. The other one, the Dome fossil be-comes the devil equivalent. The hive survives (?) the track through Mount Moon and arri-ves in Cerulean City where they then head north to defe-at Nagged bridge (?) and meet Bill who gives them an SS ti-cket. From there they manage to defeat Misty and acquire their second gym-badge. We then travel to Vermillion city where we traded a Spearow for a Farfetch’d named Dux. Short-ly after that we took on the SS and acquired the HM Cut
that we taught to our newly-ac-quired Farfetch’d not soon after. Soon after we cut the tree outside of the Vermillion city gym and entered defea-ting all the trainers. Miracu-lously, as some say it was an act of the Helix, we manage to solve the gym’s puzzle in one single try. After this the Hi-vemind defeated Leutenent Surge with most credit going towards Abby the Charmeleon. After winning our third gym-badge we caught a Drowsee and then returned to Cerulean city, where we faced the thou-ghest challenge yet: the Led-ge (?). It took almost an en-tire day to beat it, due to the constant trolls of people pressing down when we’re trying to (?)scale to the ri-ght. We finally beat it. Many argued that this was simply the Helix testing us, seeing if we had the perseverance. After beating it we certainly had the unity of one. We then made our way through the Rock tunnel and Rattatata, not to be confused with Jay Leno was taught the move Dig. Little did we know that this was the biggest mistake we would ever make. Soon after Rattatata used Dig in Rock Tunnel to te-leport us back outside and making us start the whole mis-sion over again. This earned him the nickname Digrat. The hivemind finally made through Rock Tunnel and arrived in La-vender Town, only to quickly travel again to Seladon city, where they made numerous at-tempts at sending Digrat to the PC. They finally succeeded and we’re very lucky that they didn’t accidentally released a pokemon, this time. The hive-mind then went to fight the Grass-type gym-leader Erica, but were thwarted before they could make it to her. In the next attempt Pidgey dominated the gym and received the name Bird Jesus for his valid ef-forts. He was now seen as a prophet sent by Helix. Shortly after acquiring the fourth gym-badge the team realized that they would need a poke-mon capable of learning Surf, or they would not be able to beat the game. They decided on acquiring an Eevee and ho-pes of evolving it into a Va-
poreon. They did manage to get the Eevee, but their at-tempts at buying a Waterstone failed, as they accidentally bought a Firestone instead. Most members of the hivemind were quite distraught as they had no more money to purchase another stone, and Flareon is considered to be the worst of the three evolution Eevee-olu-tions in generation one. The solution to this problem was going to the daycare to depo-sit a pokemon instead of the PC. As the daycare has no risk of accidentally releasing a pokemon. They tried to maneu-ver the ledges of the daycare, but it just wasn’t working. They were going to have to use a PC if they wanted to open up another slot to get a water pokemon. This time were not as lucky and ended up relea-sing both Abby and Jay Leno from the party. This was the huge blow as Abby was one of our best pokemon and Jay Leno was a pretty freakin’ cool name if you ask me. And to make matters worst, Digrat was retrieved from the PC. This put all hope of success in the Bird Jesus, as Abby was the only other good pokemon. The hive was outraged and blamed Eevee for their problems. He received the nickname The fal-se prophet sent by the dome fossil to thwart the Helix. We then traveled back to Seladon city to fight Team Rocket at the game corner (?) as expected Digrat dug us out after not very much success. Upon reen-tering the Firestone was used on Eevee and it became a Fla-reon. We continued to attempt to make it on Giovanni, but unfortunately Digrat conti-nued to mess things up. We realized the only hope of be-ating the Rocket lair was if we deposited the Digrat. Un-fortunately, we accidentally deposited Bird Jesus instead. The stream then realized that Bird Jesus was their only hope of success and decided to try to withdraw him. We were suc-cessful. The hivemind then spent countless hours trying to make it through the rocket lay with no avail (?). This was all due to the fault of Digrat. At sometime during these failings a new system
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was put in place, called the democratic system, and al-lowed for people to vote on the player’s next move, inste-ad of everyone just randomly shouting out what choice they wanted to happen. This star-ted what we call the Start 9 riots. People got extremely frustrated because they wanna the old system put in place. And with this new system there was (?) also a thing that (?) was you could type in how many times you passed the com-mands. You could do “left 2” and the character would move to left twice. People start to putting in Start 9 as in pro-test to say “No we don’t want this system” and was shortly moved back to the old system which we now call “anarchy”. After many more Dig-misshaps in the Rocket lair we again decided to try in depositing Digrat. Instead this time we accidentally deposited the fake prophet Flareon and Drow-see. A new system called the “Anarchy vs. Democracy” tug-of-war (?) was put into place. Essentially how it worked was people would vote for what sort of system they would want, and whenever they got the 75% that would take over, until the next one would go over the 75%. People were again very outraged at that this, however people did make more progress on the demo-cracy system. After lots of feuding (?) eventually anarchy won over and we went back to this continual system of Di-grat teleporting. At one point after a very frustrating tele-port, we made the decision that we are going to release Flareon the false prophet. Too much avail it did happen and Drowsee was withdrawn. Drow-see was nicknamed The keeper as he was the one who suppo-sedly stopped Flareon from escaping from the PC. After much teleporting we eventual-ly got the Lift key, and made it to Giovanni where we expe-rienced a very tense battle. It was down to our Bird Jesus versus his Kangaskhan. Bird Jesus had 8 HP left, his Kan-gaskhan had very minimal HP. Bird Jesus used Whirlwind but it did nothing. His Kangaskhan used Rage to take it down to
1 HP. Unfortunately, he used Whirlwind again and it died. This time we have lost. Reven-ge set (?), the team made it back to Giovanni’s lair where Bird Jesus destroyed his Kan-gaskhan to win the match. Be-fore they could acquire the Silver Scope (?), however, the Digrat decided to teleport and they had to travel once more through the Rocket lair to ac-quire the Silver Scope. People were quite angry at Digrat at this point. At some point du-ring this whole misshap we ma-naged to acquire an Oddish, who got named The Seed of Hope. From here we traveled back to Lavender town, where we went into the tower and defeated our rival Blue. Rea-lizing that our team are ill-equipped to battle ghost the hive have trained our pokemon through the docs (?) and down into the signage (?), where they grew quite a few levels. We tried to teach Bird Jesus Swift, but unfortunately Digrat got the TM and traded it for Thunderbolt. This was a very bad trade. Seeing as Drowsee is the psychic poke-mon we realized that he was the best bet at taking up the ghosts and we traveled to Saf-fron city in an attempt to te-ach him Psychic. After count-less hours we managed to make it learn Psychic. During these times the hivemind also orga-nized the plan to go to the Fighting Dojo and acquire one of the Hitmon pokemon. This succeeded. However, Hitmon Lee went to the PC. Hitmon Lee was at level 30 and were a very very high potential for our team. He would have been another pokemon that could actually help us out. Unfortu-nately, in an attempt to with-draw him, he got released. So-mething that really really shouldn’t have happened. Now that we had a pokemon better equipped to fight ghosts, we left Saffron city and travel-led back to Lavender town where we started in attemp-ting to beat the tower. During one of the many trials at the tower we caught a Ghastly and named it Rick Ghastley. Now the pokemon tower was an ab-solute black for us (?) with a very slow progress. It seemed
like every time we have made it in an advancement, we would surely die afterwards. Now once we made it to the fifth floor things started to speed up a little bit better. You see, on the fifth floor there’s a healing pad, and this helps stop the number of blackout we had. Unfortunately at the same time we also made Draw-see lose Psychic for Headbutt; fortunately, however, at the same time, our only other that could damage ghosts, a.k.a. Digrat, evolved into Raticate, or Big Diggy, and Bird Jesus also earned the nickname AAA-BAAJSS, or Aber (?) Jesus; after a very very very long time we beat Marowak, defeat the Team Rocket, save Mr. Fuji and got the Poke Flute. It was now time to move on. The Hi-vemind had itself in an at-tempt to move the sleeping Snorlax located on the docks. We tried to catch him, but un-fortunately we failed; the same time X-Cabbage evolved into Gloom. After a surplus of trainer battles and a lot of travelling we finally made it to Fuji city. The team went straight to the gym where we had a couple of trainer batt-les, but then had second thou-ghts and decided to go to the Safari zone. Unfortunately Big Dig dug us out and we were at the door step again. From here we with very damaged Pokemon we went back to the gym and tried to fight Koga. Obviously we lost. With revitalized pokemon and revenge in our hearts we sat back to the Fuji city gym to fight Koga. This time we won the battle ear-ning our fifth gym-badge, but victory wasn’t without its losses: Bird Jesus accidental-ly traded its move Gust for Mirror Move. This was very un-fortunate as Quick-attack was Bird Jesus’s only pure-dama-ging move. The hivemind then headed back to the Safari zone where Big Dig continued to dig us out until democracy kicked in and we eventually got Surf and the Golden Teeth. In total we got five Nidorans, two Veno-nats, one Parassite, one Exeg-gcute, one Nidorino, one Rhinhorn and a Venomoth named AATTVV, who received the nick-name ATV, or All-Terrain Veno-
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moth. After beating the Safari zone short-timing, we then he-aded back to Saffron city, where we made quick work of the Rocket at Silph Co. We beat the rivals, got Lapras, which was named Air, or Air Jordan, we then attempted to defeat Giovanni, but lost on our first try and bested him in the second. We now acquired the Masterball. Our next objective was to beat Sabrina: in our first attempt we lost, due to insufficient healing; however, in the second attempt we won. We were then faced with the trouble of leaving the gym. This took many hours and people often made the joke that leaving the gym was actually harder than beating Sabrina. The 12 hourse that followed this victory are often referred to now as The Bloody Sunday. With six gym badges under our and the Ma-sterball, we are now faced with the choice of what poke-mon would be catch. There was five answers that went out: Zapdos, Articuno, Moltres, the Snorlax in the Diglett’s tun-nel and Mewtwo. Mewtwo was out of the picture as we had to beat the Elite Four before we could acquire it. Most pe-ople didn’t want the Snorlax, so we didn’t go with that ei-ther. Now Moltres was going to take a little bit more time before we could reach him, so we were faced with the two choices of Zapdos and Articu-no. We went with the Zapdos. We were going to face the Le-dge again. We traveled to Ce-rulean city, beat the ledge, surfed to the power plant and caught Zapdos in only a mere few hours. It was a miracle. That it, is it was a miracle until the events that followed after: we now had to withdraw Zapdos from the PC. In the process twelve pokemon was released. Of them, very no-table ones included Dux the Farfetch’d, Big Dig the Rati-cate and X-cabbage the Gloom. It was genocide on the largest scale TwitchPlaysPokemon would ever known. In only a few hours we’ve managed to release half a roster (?) as well as not even acquire Zapdos. Not wanting to risk any more rele-
ases, the hivemind traveled through Rock Tunnel where they eventually got an idea. They went to the daycare. This time it was a success. They were able to deposit Rick Ghastley, and from the PC Zapdos was withdrawn. With nickname AAJ Zapdos acquired the name Anarchy Jesus. The next goal was to travel to Pallett town in order to be able to surf to Cinnabar island. During the journey we acquired another Moonstone and evolved our Ni-dorino that (?) wound up in our party into a Nidoking. He acquired the nickname Da Fon-ts (?). Air Jordan surfed the team to Cinnabar island and at long last (?) the Helix Fossil was revived. Shortly after the hivemind withdrew him. Lord Helix was with us. With Nidoking Da Fonts, Air Jordan the Lapras, Bird Jesus the Pidgeot, Anarchy Jesus the Zapdos, ATV the Venomoth and Lord Helix the team set over to beat the Mansion. It took many trials to actually beat the Mansion, and at one point we actually blacked out di-rectly in front of the key. There was another point where we got stuck behind the table and a robber and actually in order to escape. Eventually we got the gym key, however, and had it to fight Blame. The most help credited towards Anarchy Jesus we beat Blaine in a mere six turns and got the seventh gym-badge. We then headed back to Pallet town to deposit some items and then traveled north, up to Viridian city. Our next goal was to acquire our eight gym-badge. Now, in theory, this sounded like a pretty easy task. But because there isn’t a ledge right out-side the gym. It took basical-ly an entire day to get inside and beat Giovanni. Over final-ly, through the help of demo-cracy, the hivemind did make it into Giovanni’s gym and successfully defeated him. We acquired our eighth gym-badge and our eyes were now set on the Elite four. After a failed Victory Road attempt, the team headed back to the Pokemon mansion to do a little bit of grinding. We grew a few le-vels, but not too many. We
then headed back and tried to make it through Victory Road. Now, because there is a ledge outside the entrance of the area, people were very hesi-tant to try this again. But perhaps with the help of He-lix, or it was just luck, the team managed to navigate them-selves into Victory Road quite swiftly. On this Victory road attempt we found the TM Sky-attack and taught it to Bird Jesus, but unfortunately we ended up blacking over. We then went back to the pokemon mansion to do a bit more trai-ning. After a bit more grin-ding we then headed back to Victory road where we made it through. Not only this, but Helix evolved into Omastar. At this point we had two options: we go back to Victory Road and do some more grinding there, but some people realized that the Elite four is a better experience than simply grin-ding there. So instead we op-ted to just go forward, wi-thout any concerned for blacking out. Now at this point, the Elite four was very similar to the pokemon tower. It seemed like every attempt we made progress, that it was very very limited. Because our pokemon were still in the 65 to 35 range we were doing gre-at but we were gaining some very valuable experience. Eventually, without even real-ly trying, we did make it to Blue, but he quickly disposed diverse as our pokemon were very low in health. After much leveling up we were ready to take on the Elite four. It was time to win. Are winning run started off very very well. Lorelei, Bruno and Agatha were quickly dealt with as a result of Anarchy Jesus. Lance’s dra-gons proved to be a bigger challange, as their were resi-stant to our lighting bird. Air Jordan and Lord Helix fell, but we had beaten Lance, we’ve become champions, but wait, someone had just beaten Lances: a familiar face. It was now time to face the true champion. In an epic battle that shook Kanto to its roots. Red challenges Blue, the cham-pion. Things started out in-credibly well for us, with
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Zapdos disposing our Bird Je-sus impostor, Pidgeot and Alakazam, with two swift Thun-der. It was then Fonts versus Blue’s Rhydon. But because Fonts knew Surf, it was able to take them out in one shot. Zapdos then killed Arcanine with yet another deadly Thun-der. Next Blue send on Exeg-gutor, but with a button com-bination that looked like a single controlling entity we countered with Bird Jesus, he was up into the sky and struck down with Sky Attack. It was now four-one for Red. Blue was not done yet, however, Bla-stoise was quickly disposed to Bird Jesus with a Blizzard. It was a devastating blow to the team. It was now Blastoise versus AAJA, Fonts and ATV. Thinking of those fallen friends, like Dux, Digrat, X-cabbage, Abby and Jay Leno we were ready to win. We send out Zapdos and with one quick Thundershock we did it. It took sixteen days, seven hours and forty-five minutes, but we have done it. Red had done it and Twitch plays pokemon had done it. We’ve become the pokemon League champion. Friends were made and lost, bonds were tied, community was formed, so as a religion. History was made, in the first dream of Twitch plays pokemon we had succeeded.
Transcription of Casey Reas at The Center for Design and Geopolitics (Ca-lit2, University of Califor-nia, San Diego. June 3, 2011)
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Benjamin H. Bratton: So, the topic of this panel, The agen-cy of code — how that agency works itself as form, as tool, as policy. Socrates, the fa-mous luddite, argued that wri-ting itself was a pharmakon, which means both cure and poi-son, both these at once. The term has a usefulness to think about the way in which code works as a kind of writing,
in the way in which the agency is writing of that code wor-ks to write us. We can think of the citizen in the tradi-tional Kantian models of the citizen. The citizen was a po-litical subject that was ca-pable of writing and of ca-pable of being written too. So we as citizens as for-malized political subjects we embody that pharmakon. Du-ring the Roman era the ci-tizenship, however, which was drive largely through your membership in a parti-cular city, you are a member of a jurisdiction, civis romae assumed. And as we are now, as we know, a majority of ur-ban species, more people live in cities than in the out-side of cities, the question of that civis assumes one whi-ch is not so much a citizen of any one city but rather a citizen of a kind of univer-sal city a kind of aggregate on a planetary scale city that is in a way already both the cosmos and the polis from which any cosmopolitan poli-cies might derive. The digital vision of the open government movement, as in Tim O’Reilly’s terms government-as-a-pla-tform, in different government which is, always been, Foucau-lt writes about this in a dif-ferent way, a kind of informa-tion gathering and processing mechanism for the production and organization of popula-tions, but the government s not only an information-pro-ducing and gathering entity but in a government-as-a-pla-tform model also ubiquous and democratically reprogrammable machine for making the wor-ld as information and making it as in principle as useful as possible. So in this self-governance becomes a kind of depending on which project you are talking about either perhaps a cybernetician dre-am of infinite leisure on one hand, or this infinitely ratio-nalized labour on the other on the other, or in Niklas Luh-mann’s terms a kind of infini-tely autopoetic social system.
Casey Reas: So, the big pictu-re for this talk can be sum-marized fairly briefly: for the
last decade I’ve been working to encourage more designers, artists and architects to pro-gram computers, to code; it’s been a very narrow domain, my head has been down most of the time, really focusing on that; I’m now beginning to try to look at it with more perspective. The larger que-stion is Why have I been working towards that? In my opinion the complexity of our cultu-re, and of the world, requires the type of thinking that pro-gramming enables. And by that, I mean, we need our designers, artist and architects to think in terms of models and simu-lations. We need to be able to think and build system ra-ther than a set of fixed rela-tionships or objects, they need to be able to grasp analyze tackle difficult complex sy-stems. They need to be able to break them into smaller manageabler pieces in order to understand them, and they need to build relational machi-nes rather of single instances of an object or of an idea. So this talk rather than following up a line, is more a set of topics, it’s an unordered list, the first of which is: A brief history of codingSo, the term real program-mer is used to describe the first generation of computer programmers, as described by Erick Raymond in The ca-thedral and the bazar: “The real programmers typi-cally came out from enginee-ring and physics backgrounds; they were amateur radio hob-byists they were white socks and polyester shirts and ties and thick glasses and coded in machine language and As-sembler and Fortran and a half of other languages now forgotten.” Of course Fortran is not for-gotten. Before the 1960s’ there are only a few dozen computers in the world, and they were the size of a lar-ge room and quite of a large staff mantained them, but the important point there is the access to these machines was strictly limited.
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The next rough generation of programmers were the hackers: so hackers were enthu-siasts and experts. The were people who were technically adapt and loved in solving problems. Hackers used new generations of more reliable less expensive computers such as the PDP-1. They had a less serious and often-times sub-versive attitude towards these computing machines. Hackers invented the first videogame, pictured here, Spacewars, were two ships battled on-scre-en. The next category in the story of programmers is the amateur. The widespread co-verage of personal computers in the early 1980s’ allowed for a new group of computer users: amateurs and children. Through languages like Basic millions more people lear-ned how to write programmes. My generation was the first to learn how to program in elementary school. And this led to the next category, which I think is the present, this is the category which I call the hybrid: So hybrid is a professional in a field who also knows how to program well but they use it for their work. They’re not professional programmers, but for them programming and com-puters are a medium to think with and to make work with and they use these as tools for thought, to allow them to do their work, for example the statistician who makes simula-tions, the economist who ma-kes agent-based simulations, the person who studies the genome, who uses computation as a way of analysing their data. And so the last rhetori-cal last category is everyone. There will be a time when everybody is expected to, or everybody learn to pro-gram. In my opinion this is a really interesting concept I think the same way we had a fundamental shift in our culture when a larger group of people learned to read and write I think the same can happen if more people engage with programming.
Procedural literacyIt’s a kind of hairy term, me-
aning something, but I think it’s a very graspable, and a really important concept. I’m still looking for a better term, but at this moment this is the placeholder. So while I read I will play this movie. This movies was made in 1965, and it’s a film of Frieder Nake, who at that time was a ma-thematician, making/program-ming drawings. So, software is a tool for the mind; whi-le the industrial revolution produced tools that augmen-ted the body such as the ste-am engine, the automobile. The information revolution is producing tools to extend the intellect; the softwa-re resources and techniques at our disposal allows us to access and process enormous quantities of information. For example, the science of ge-nomics, and the collaborati-ve scholarship of Wikipedia, are not possible without the aid of software. But using software of course is not only about increasing our abili-ty to work with a large volu-mes of information and also encourages new ways of thin-king. The term Procedural li-teracy has been used to define this potential. Micheal Mat-teis describes Procedural li-teracy as: “The ability to read and write processes, to enga-ge procedural representations and aesthetics.” One component of procedural literacy is the idea that programming is not strictly a technical task. It’s an active communication in a symbolic way of represen-ting the world. A procedural representation is not static. It’s a system of rules that define a spaces for possible forms in action.
Ian Bogost defines this in his books Persuasive games: the expressive power of videoga-mes, so, to quote him: To write procedurally one au-thors code that enforces ru-les to generate some kinds of representation, rather than offering the representation itself. Procedural systems generate behaviours based on rule-based models, they are machines capable of producing
many outcomes, each confor-ming to the same overall gui-delines. And then, to quote Mar-shall McLuhan, in related the emerging media of his time he wrote: Today we’re begin-ning to realize that new media art just mechanical gimmicks for creating world evolution, but they are new languages with unique power of expres-sion. So, in my opinion writing code, is one gateway to rea-lizing these new forms. Lear-ning to program and to enga-ge the computer more directly through writing code,opens the possibility not only crea-ting tools, but also systems, environments and entirely new modes of expressions. It’s here that the computer ceases to be solely a tool and inste-ad becomes a medium. Often to realize a newer unique vision requires exceeding limitations of existing software tools. So to go beyond what the cur-rent software does, and you do that by extending through reading or writing your own software from scratch. That is introduction to procedural literacy. So in order to demonstrate what I mean by procedural li-teracy in relation to the arts I’m gonna show two projects that I have been working on, the first one, Process com-pendium, is something I’ve been working on and off for the last seven years on and it is a very general system of behaviours and geome-tric forms and through tho-se I’ve been enabled to make deal with generate a series of very organic images from these extremely minimal sim-plistic mechanical definitions. So we start with the first element which is the circle. The first behaviour is mo-ving in a straight line, the next behaviour is constrained to surface, the third is chan-ge direction while touching another element, the fourth is move away from an over-lapping element. So if we take these behaviours and we add them together into what
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we call Element1. This is what that looks as a diagram; in order to read that a litt-le bit better, we can reve-al the different behaviours. This arrows represents beha-viour1, move along a strai-ght line, this one is beha-viour2, which is basically when you’re touching one of these cyrcle rotating, the next is when you’re overlap-ping another circle then you move away from the center. So when you are working with ba-sics systems like this, you can make different decisions, for example the speed in which they are moving, or the size in which they are moving. And by changing these parameters, the parameters of systems, new forms start to emerge and unfold. So, to kind of recap, this is element1, and this is element3. So element3 is diffierent in that uses a line rather than a cyrcle and that we’ve added this behaviour of enter from the opposite edge after moving off the surface. This in a sense creates a toroidal surface out of the flat original screen. This is that element as a dia-gram. You can see they move along straight lines and then when they overlap they begin turning. Here with another set of assumption, or changing pa-rameters. Element5, the diffe-rence here is behaviour6 and behaviour7: orient towards the direction element that is touching and deviate from the current direction. So this is what they look as a diagram. With this simple behaviours we begin to see this phenome-na of flocking happen, as they assume the same orientation as their neighbours. So, at the moment, the sy-stem, this library of forms and behaviours, this is the current status, it’s these few simple rules and from that I’ll show you what comes out from that. So this is what I call Process, and a process essentially is taking many instances of one element, putting them together within a space, and allowing their behaviours to play out, and to see what emerges from that. So in this case process4 uses
element1 and has a basic rule that when two circles are tou-ching you draw a line between their center points. And in this case the shortest possi-ble line is represented as a black line, the longest pos-sible line as a white line and the than the various greys of the distances in between. And you have shorter or longer li-nes when the circles are lar-ger or smaller. So here this is how that’s defined, I usual-ly define this processes in English rather than in code. So that it’s legible to the larger group of people who don’t read source code, and also there’s still ambiguity involved. When things beco-mes source code they becomes so precisely defined that a lot of opportunities or va-riations to become lost. This is another iteration of pro-cess4 where there’s a few dif-ferent assumptions about the system and some other parame-ters are changed. So when this one begins it begins in its state of max enthropy where there’s a random distribution across the screen and overti-me order begins to form as the behaviours are followed. [...] The birth of Processing The idea of Processing is to have a purring environment that we developed specifical-ly for the visual arts, for architects designers artists. The difference here, I think it’s a very subtle shift, but I think it’s an important shi-ft, is that we teach program-ming through making images, through making animations, through making interacti-ve experiences. The history of programming paedagogy is all done through calculations and making text, so the shift enables a whole new segment, people who think in a radi-cally different way from the traditional computer science thinking, to be able to un-derstand these fundamental ideas. So Processing was most inspired and developed based on this language called De-sign by numbers, which is the
brainchild of John Maeda, who was my advisor at MIT, back a decade or so ago. Design by numbers was an amazing sy-stem because it allowed desi-gners without any experience to enter and engage with this basic programming concepts using variables functions ite-rations etc. But it was con-strained to this very small space, which doesnt’t allow people to realize their full ambitions. The alternative to that, are this kind of pro-fessional programming envi-ronment and I think you can really easily see the contrast between the two.
So with Processing we set out to make something that was a bit inbetween, basi-cally a bridge between the two. So with Processing you can write code that is just a few lines long, you have few menu buttons that allow you to do the basic things you need to do, but at the same time you can add complexi-ty. So you can begin to add in a very scalable and modu-lar way the complexity at the point where you’re actually programming full Java programs entirely within this environ-ment, and you can actually migrate out of the environ-ment into a full Java editor. The primary idea of the project was to bridge a method that was really appropriate for beginners for beginning ar-tist and visual designers with what’s done in a professional environment and to meet that half-way. This (*, —>) is the ecology of Processing thin-gs that have influenced and things it has influenced. One of the most exciting new ite-rations is having the Android Mode, where you can actual-ly, just by basically changing this, immediately have pro-grams working on mobile devi-ces, jumping through the hoops you would on other platforms. Another important thing about Processing is that it allows you within this minimal fra-mework to have access to a lot of the power of (?) computa-tion. I’ll show you a program to make face detection, which
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one time was a topic of aca-demic research, but that now it is at a point where wi-thin a few line of code you can have something working and this allows designers to enable their ideas, without needing semester of computer programming training. So ba-sically to reduce that barrier for designer to explore their idea. This is a graph of the number of people who use Pro-cessing. And I think the im-portant thing about this graph it is these patterns you can see: these valley are summer holidays, and these are winter holidays. It is heaviliy hea-vility tight to the academic structure. Last thing I want to talk about is the pedagogy behind Processing, and again, this is the subtle shift whi-ch ha made a huge difference in bringing programming to design and arts schools and those programs inside univer-sities. So, in writing a book about programming for desi-gners we did something that hadn’t really been seen befo-re, and that was in writing the book you have one third text, one third code and one third images. And you have these really concise program-mes that you can type in, edit or just load, and then there are the images that are pro-duced there. So we were trying to keep the design studen-ts visually-engaged, motiva-ted and give basically a li-brary of examples that they can collage together and make new programmers. These are the currents series of books that use pProcessing, and this is the one at the moment I’m most excited about. The O’Reilly make book, that al-lows a much lower price point and hobbysts and amateur to have this basic intro-duction to programming. And the thing I’m excited about it is this curriculum which has been organically develo-ping over the last decade in the classrooms. Essential-ly is a way of teaching pro-gramming that is a different order and different methodo-logy than it’s typically made in computer science depart-ment. And everything is always done within the framework
of making images in motion. You start off by drawing and there you learn about how to use functions, you learn about the coordinate system, you start within using va-riables then you immediately move into interactions so using the mouse and keyboard, and then learn how to load me-dia, photographs, typography, things that visual people care deeply about and it’s then you got into some of the more in-teresting maths, trigonome-try for producing motion and at that point you then get into what I think as the meet of a computer science educa-tion and understanding where you learn about how to write your own functions, your own objects, with many elemen-ts through arrays. And once you have the basic of the-se, things flow very naturally and at that point students are very motivated to be working with these structures because in a way they have been doing it the slightly tedious way of writing things out in a long-hand way and these structures then enable them to make new kinds of structures and explo-re different kinds of ideas.
HTML5
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World Design Science Decade 1965-1975: Phase I Document 1: Inventory of World Resources Human Trends and Needs Buckminster Fuller, (1963) https://bfi.org/sites/default/files/attachments/literature_source/wdsd_phase1_doc1_inventory.pdf
The New Vision and abstract of an artist László Moholy-Nagy, (1947) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/54d29420334fe00cceaf15b6
Algorithmics: the Spirit of Informatics David Harel, (1987)
DuMont’s Kopf-Zerbrecher: Tangram Jost Eiffers, DuMont (1976)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid Douglas Hofstadter, (1979) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c584176c3a0ed90bd90300
Commentaries on the Society of Spectacle, Guy Debord, (1989) http://www.notbored.org/commentaires.html
Consensual Hallucinations (or, the Birth of the Computational Sublime) Hari Kunzru, (1996) http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/consensual-hallucinations-or-birth-computational-sublime
Earth moves Bernard Cache, Mit press (1995) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c5856f6c3a0e090c0f0100
Consensual Hallucinations (or, the Birth of the Computational Sublime) Hari Kunzru, (1996) http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/consensual-hallucinations-or-birth-computational-sublime
Earth moves Bernard Cache, Mit press (1995) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c5856f6c3a0e090c0f0100
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Debord’s Nostalgic Algorithm Alexander R. Galloway, (2009) http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewFile/350/352
Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic culture Alexander R. Galloway, Minnesota University press (2006) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58bfe6c3a0eda0bdc7600
{Software} StructuresWhitney Museum of Modern Art, (2004) http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/Artport/Commissions/SoftwareStructures
Datasthetics: How to do things with Data Stephen Wright, (2006) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58dd26c3a0ec111091600
The math and magic of origami Robert Lang, TED talk (2008) http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami
Digital currents: Art in The Electronic Age Margot Lovejoy, Routledge press (2005) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58bfe6c3a0eda0ba68100
In the name of Art (E.M. and M.F. on Imaginaria and Digital Art) Ewan Morrison & Matthew Fuller, Mute Magazine (21-01-2004) http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/name-art-ewan-morrison-and-matthew-fuller-imagina-ria-and-digital-art
Abstraction and Complexity Lev Manovich, (2004) http://www.egs.edu/faculty/lev-manovich/articles/abstraction-and-complexity/
System Stories and Model Worlds: a Critical Approach to Generative Art Mitchell Whitelaw, (2005) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58bfe6c3a0eda0b2d8200
Read_me, Run_me, Execute_me: Software and Its Discontents... Inke Arns, (2004) http://runme.org/project/+executeme/
Electric Dreams: Computers and American Culture Ted Friedman, (2005) https://www.academia.edu/167297/Electric_Dreams_Computers_and_American_Culture
Procedure di Basic Design: la Logica della programmazione applicata alla Didattica Lorenzo Bravi, ISIA Urbino (2005) http://www.isiaurbino.net/home/archives/3127
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Casey Reas at The Center for Design and Geopolitics Benjamin Bratton & Casey Reas, (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzQXPaYcVA
Freedom of thought Eben Moglen, re:publica (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY#t=2006
Imparare il pensiero computazionale, imparare a programmareMicheal Lodi, Unibo (2013) http://amslaurea.unibo.it/6730/1/lodi_michael_tesi.pdf
The alphabet and the Algorithm Mario Carpo, (2012) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/523a6d103078881564000010
Enfoldment and Infinity: an Islamic genealogy of New Media art Laura U. Marks, MIT Press (2010) http://enfoldment.net/
Alien Phenomenology: or What it’s like to be a thing Ian Bogost, Minnesota University press (2012) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58cf66c3a0edb0bde0a00
Tebe dalle Sette Porte Giovanni Lussu, (2013) http://www.isiaurbino.net/home/archives/6347
Exhausting Gameplay Douglas Edric Stanley, (2012) http://www.creativeapplications.net/games/exhausting-gameplay-by-douglas-edric-stanley-theory-games/
Black on Black Eugene Thacker, Mute magazine (2013) http://www.metamute.org/editorial/occultural-studies-column/black-black
Programmare l’arte. Olivetti e le Neoavanguardie cinetiche Marco Meneguzzo, Enrico Morteo, Alberto Saibene (2012) http://www.museodelnovecento.org/le-mostre/51-mostre/mostre-nel-tempo/267-programmare-l-arte-olivet-ti-e-le-neoavanguardie-cinetiche
Learning how to die in the Anthropocene Roy Scranton, (10-11-2013) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/
Speculative Everything: Design Fiction and Social Dreaming Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, Mit press (2012) http://aaaaarg.fail/upload/anthony-dunne-speculative-everything-1.pdf
Thinking about Art Thinking Luis Camnitzer, E-Flux Journal(2015) http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/thinking-about-art-thinking/
In the World Interior of Capital: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Globalization Peter Sloterdijk, Polity press (2013) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/5262d5b1307888b740000005v
The Technical Composition of Conceptualism Joshua Clover, Mute Magazine (2-4-2014) http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/technical-composition-conceptualism
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ai parents, Elisabetta ed Edgardo
Playstocene — an inquiry into ... is a bachlelor thesis project
developed by Fabio Bernardi during SS2015 at the faculty
for design and arts of Bolzano
session 15.2
professors Emanuela De Cecco and Angelo Boriolo tutored the work;
Font: Lekton, by ISIA Urbino
blame for artsy, self-indulgent, prejudicial overdesigns should be
accounted on the behalf which is here claiming that views,
thoughts and works described are offered, as were inteded
to be produced, to learn, enthusiast, or, in the worst case, at least, to testify the author’s commit-
ment to the discipline
I’m grateful for helping me with this work to a long list of people: my
flatmates Rosanna, Federica and Tuana; Sofia, Giulio Isacchini for precious
scientific help, Francesco Bevilacqua for precious technical skills, Chiara,
Matteo, Eszter and Jacopo.
A longer list should be there with the people I met at the faculty in
the last four years. Thank you