Playstocene — An inquiry into algorithmic forms

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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in (Meneguzzo, 2012)

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Transcription of The Complete History of Twi-tch Plays Pokemon (“Highli-

ghts” and Backstory)

_________________________

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)

_________________________

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.

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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid Douglas Hofstadter, (1979) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c584176c3a0ed90bd90300

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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

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Debord’s Nostalgic Algorithm Alexander R. Galloway, (2009) http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewFile/350/352

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{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

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System Stories and Model Worlds: a Critical Approach to Generative Art Mitchell Whitelaw, (2005) http://aaaaarg.fail/thing/51c58bfe6c3a0eda0b2d8200

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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

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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

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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

Playstocene — An inquiry into algorithmic forms

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Transcript of Playstocene — An inquiry into algorithmic forms