Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Niolog screenshots and brain language


here's a sequence of 25 screenshots from 'niolog':
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/screenshots/nio22.htm

these are screenshots of 'the pen' in action as it moves 4 nibs around the
screen, nibs whose 'inks' are animations from a 2001 interactive audio piece
i did called nio.

the nio animations are made of language, of letters. letters only. they are
phonemes that are uttered/sung in nio. so the above screenshots are visual
representations of that which is sung, of language that is sung. but they
could also be thought of as representations of thought. in process in the
brain. representations of what language looks like inside the head.
emotions. thoughts. involved with language. and song.

these screenshots look rather like 'onion skins' but not quite. an 'onion
skin' is what you would see were you to see several frames at once of an
animation, where frames further from some near-opaque focus-frame become
increasingly transparent.

these are different from onion skins in two ways. there are four animations
visible, at any given time (not just one), and the animations themselves are
in motion, not simply the content of the animations.

perhaps this, in part, accounts for the heightened complexity beyond, say,
the onion skins of http://vispo.com/nio/still1.htm . this latter url shows a
sequence of onion skins of individual nio animations.

if you use flash, you can view the animation as an onion skin inside the
flash interface.

to view the nio animations themselves, with no onion skinning or whatever,
have a look at http://vispo.com/nio/Nio5.htm . here you also see there is a
correspondence between a particular animation and its sound (which i sung).

to view the generative piece in which the screenshots were created, have a
look at http://vispo.com/nio/pens/springs7.htm and, in the toolbar at the
bottom, mouseover the controls until the Help ghost says "Choose Poem". Then
click the control to change from "TIME" to "Niolog".

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: RE: Jim Andrews' Pen


Thanks, Millie. Yours has been one of the very few responses I've
received.
ja

y do u think that is, jim?
mez

i think people usually respond in writing not about individual art works,
but on issues concerning classes of art works.
ja

DISCUSSION

RE: Jim Andrews' Pen


Thanks, Millie. Yours has been one of the very few responses I've received.

Basically, I've gotten it to a point where it needs a re-write if I want to
take it further. It's quite 'nib-centric' at the mo. To take it further,
it'd have to be more 'image-centric'. In other words, currently you
configure properties of the nib, for the most part. Whereas it's more
logical to configure most such properties as properties of the
image/animation. There will be some nib properties. Such as nib geometry
(how it moves around the screen). But most of the properties are of the
image/animation, I see, on reflection.

The basic 'objects' of the design are 'pen', 'nib', 'image/animation',
'image collection/poem', 'configuration'.

I'd like to have a suite of poems with it. Currently it has just two: TIME
and Niolog. The difference between them is the set of images that go on the
nibs. TIME is made of animations of the letters of the word TIME whereas
Niolog is made of the Nio animations. All these are Flash animations
imported into Director.

I see it'd be doable to let people import their own swf or psd or jpg or gif
or png into the piece. Not sure how much call there'd be for that, however.
I think to spend the time it'd take to develop that sort of feature, it'd
have to be, first and foremost, quite desirable as a feature of the piece as
a work of art. Because as a 'product feature', it's not exceptionally
commercial.

Some related work is some of http://www.re-move.org in that some of this
uses the 'cursor trails' or 'pen' idea only with simple images, not
animations, on the 'nibs'. There's also a sonic dimension to some of
re-move.org. I can 'see' a sonic dimension to 'Niolog' or 'TIME'. Concerning
re-move.org and a lot of software art that uses some variant of 'cursor
trails' or 'the pen', almost all of it is from the visual art wing of
software art. Very little of it is writerly. But language is well-suited to
this sort of thing. The shapes of linguistic symbols. Their bodies also. The
letter as calligraphic nib. And, taking it a step further, the lettristic
animation as calligraphic nib. This is of course considerably more lively
than a static nib.

Also, it's conceptually quite satisfying to use animations/videos as nibs of
a pen. Something more interesting to do than watch a video. Stick a video on
a pen and use it for weird ink. Write a note home with it. To weird Aunt
Janie. Have the note change into a visual poem. Oops. Janie will just have
to use her imagination. Poor Jane.

ja
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/screenshots
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/springs7.htm

-----Original Message-----
From: Millie Niss [mailto:men2@columbia.edu]
Sent: May 8, 2007 6:35 AM
To: Rhizome RAW; Jim Andrews
Subject: Jim Andrews' Pen

I am very impressed by the concept of The Pen and the sample images are
very nice. What I especially like is how it takes a well-known digital art
idea -- cursor trails -- and turns it into configurable software.

The program worked amazingly fast on my 2.0 GHZ PC, especially since the
window size was very big. I like how it feels like an application and not
like a mere web thing.

My only problem was that I could not tell how my movements (clicks and
drags) on the cancas affected the drawing. My mousing around seemed not to
change the evolving image which did its thing wuthout my help. I did try
changing parameters using the toolbar, and that worked very well. Again,
the speed and responsiveness of the interface was very good.

Millie Niss
men2@columbia.edu
http://www.sporkworld.org

DISCUSSION

The Pen -> TIME and Niolog


Here are some bitmaps of a generative piece I'm working on. Start at
http://vispo.com/nio/pens/screenshots and click the graphic to go to the
next bitmap.

These are bitmaps of two pieces: "TIME" and "Niolog". As you'll see, "TIME"
is made of the letters in the word TIME. "Niolog" is made of the animations
in Nio.

These bitmaps are generated with The Pen. The Pen has four 'nibs'. The 'ink'
of each 'nib' is an animation. The 'nibs' move around the screen drawing
simultaneously.

If you have a PC or a non-Macintel Mac, you can interact with The Pen itself
at http://vispo.com/nio/pens/springs7.htm . Don't view it on a Macintel,
though. It is possible, but it goes too slow and is too ugly. In any case,
you need the Shockwave plugin from
http://vispo.com/misc/downloadShockwave.htm

Click or click and drag the drawing area to influence the pen. There's also
a blue toolbar down at bottom you can use to adjust various parameters.

This is not in any Rhizome competition, by the way.

ja

DISCUSSION

Re: Minsky and Dawkins videos


youtube yadayada are fine for some stuff, but it'd be great to be able to go
to a site where there are at least links and a search engine, along with
listings, to video such as i've linked to below: talks by artists,
scientists, critics, etc. Documentaries. A thinking person's youtube, only
with longer videos, for the most part.

ja
http://vispo.com

> MARVIN MINSKY
> http://www.edge.org/video/dsl/EF02_minsky.html
> (also check out http://www.edge.org/edge_video.html )
>
> RICHARD DAWKINS
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/113
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/98