ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (2)
BIO
Rob Myers is an artist and hacker based in the UK.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
Re: google databases
Quoting jeremy <studio@silencematters.com>:
> This is scarry stuff!
> The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order
> Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded
> databases.
Google having the database is scary as well. Apart from anything else, if they
didn't have it then the administration couldn't grab it.
"Do no evil" is not enough. But "Ensure no evil is possible" doesn't
make money.
- Rob.
> This is scarry stuff!
> The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order
> Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded
> databases.
Google having the database is scary as well. Apart from anything else, if they
didn't have it then the administration couldn't grab it.
"Do no evil" is not enough. But "Ensure no evil is possible" doesn't
make money.
- Rob.
Re: draw-something
On 13 Jan 2006, at 06:31, Zev Robinson wrote:
> I'm also not sure if true randomness exists or not, or if it's all
> fate/destiny, or a combination of the two. But much, much better
> pseudo
> randomness than pseudo certainty.
The choice of randomness is a determined choice. The choice of
determination is random.
I could use perlin noise, or a number of different ways of
constraining or processing the randomness, and I may, but always to a
particular end. Randomness has no particular profundity for me, and
I'm happy using a pseudo-random number generator. I remember seeing
the algorithm for a none-line random number generator in a computer
magazine as a child, and I recently typed one out from a book on
Prolog. So I know how simple and how unreliable they are. I wish
Silicon Graphics still had their lava-lite camera feed online. That
was really random.
In draw-something I use draw-something to generate forms that are
unpredictable (but statistically will fall into interesting
arrangements) for the drawing algorithm to tackle. And I use it to
simulate human perceptual fallibility in the drawing algorithm. What
I don't do is generate a form then add noise to it to make it wobbly
once it's been drawn properly: the randomness is a factor in the
generation of the drawing with a specific purpose, not an after-effect.
Duchamp faked his stoppages. :-)
- Rob.
> I'm also not sure if true randomness exists or not, or if it's all
> fate/destiny, or a combination of the two. But much, much better
> pseudo
> randomness than pseudo certainty.
The choice of randomness is a determined choice. The choice of
determination is random.
I could use perlin noise, or a number of different ways of
constraining or processing the randomness, and I may, but always to a
particular end. Randomness has no particular profundity for me, and
I'm happy using a pseudo-random number generator. I remember seeing
the algorithm for a none-line random number generator in a computer
magazine as a child, and I recently typed one out from a book on
Prolog. So I know how simple and how unreliable they are. I wish
Silicon Graphics still had their lava-lite camera feed online. That
was really random.
In draw-something I use draw-something to generate forms that are
unpredictable (but statistically will fall into interesting
arrangements) for the drawing algorithm to tackle. And I use it to
simulate human perceptual fallibility in the drawing algorithm. What
I don't do is generate a form then add noise to it to make it wobbly
once it's been drawn properly: the randomness is a factor in the
generation of the drawing with a specific purpose, not an after-effect.
Duchamp faked his stoppages. :-)
- Rob.
Re: draw-something
On 11 Jan 2006, at 14:54, Pall Thayer wrote:
> I was looking at this and find it interesting. Thanks for sharing
> the code with us.
The reason for this (above the usual Free Software ethics) is that
AARON, Harold Cohen's drawing program, is closed source. That's
Harold's right, but I wanted to see the source code to AARON. I
decided I would put my money where my mouth is and let other people
see the source code to whatever I came up with.
> There are a couple of questions that come to mind. I'd like to know
> if you have any plans of making the lines more "pencil"-like by
> creating a more expressive line. I feel this is an issue that has
> been largely overlooked by people working with automated drawing
> processes. They tend to look really flat and dead because of it.
Part of the idea behind draw-something is that it is a model of my
own drawing, and I tend to use Tria markers. So my own drawings are
often actually quite flat with fairly "lifeless" lines.
> AARON, for instance, suffers from a severe case of flatness that
> could be easily cured by some simple, maybe even random, variation
> in line thickness and length.
IMO I'm not sure I agree with that. Even if the earlier monochrome
lines were more pen-and-ink than pencil-and-paper, they had an
expressive quality. And AARON functions as a kind of aesthetic
"proof": what you see is what AARON has done with a pen or a brush in
the same way as you would have to.
I am considering varying the line width, though. :-)
> There's an interesting project called Freestyle that's working on
> this (among other things) at http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/
> index.php (source available).
Thank you for the link, this is a very interesting project. I regard
Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR) as the opposite of a drawing
program: it is a post-processing step rather than an embodied
process. But the simulation techniques are useful.
> Also, I noticed this on your blog:
> [...randomness...]
> I think it has to do with the range of data. Random is going to use
> the whole range of data equally whereas something like weather is
> going to be concentrated in predictable area's of the full range.
Yes, a commenter on my weblog pointed out that the way I am using
randomness will tend to statistically converge towards the middle of
the range, which explains some of how the shapes and colours look.
> Personally, I think it's really interesting to see what happens
> with different types of data. If you experiment with different data
> sources, I think you'll find that they each have their own
> significant character which could in turn be interesting to mix
> together.
I do like the idea of using different data sources. I have another
project called paintr ( http://paintr.robmyers.org/ ) that uses
colr.org and flickr.com for source material. draw-something is
intended as a self-contained system, but there are different ways of
generating numbers for it to use.
- Rob.
> I was looking at this and find it interesting. Thanks for sharing
> the code with us.
The reason for this (above the usual Free Software ethics) is that
AARON, Harold Cohen's drawing program, is closed source. That's
Harold's right, but I wanted to see the source code to AARON. I
decided I would put my money where my mouth is and let other people
see the source code to whatever I came up with.
> There are a couple of questions that come to mind. I'd like to know
> if you have any plans of making the lines more "pencil"-like by
> creating a more expressive line. I feel this is an issue that has
> been largely overlooked by people working with automated drawing
> processes. They tend to look really flat and dead because of it.
Part of the idea behind draw-something is that it is a model of my
own drawing, and I tend to use Tria markers. So my own drawings are
often actually quite flat with fairly "lifeless" lines.
> AARON, for instance, suffers from a severe case of flatness that
> could be easily cured by some simple, maybe even random, variation
> in line thickness and length.
IMO I'm not sure I agree with that. Even if the earlier monochrome
lines were more pen-and-ink than pencil-and-paper, they had an
expressive quality. And AARON functions as a kind of aesthetic
"proof": what you see is what AARON has done with a pen or a brush in
the same way as you would have to.
I am considering varying the line width, though. :-)
> There's an interesting project called Freestyle that's working on
> this (among other things) at http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/
> index.php (source available).
Thank you for the link, this is a very interesting project. I regard
Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR) as the opposite of a drawing
program: it is a post-processing step rather than an embodied
process. But the simulation techniques are useful.
> Also, I noticed this on your blog:
> [...randomness...]
> I think it has to do with the range of data. Random is going to use
> the whole range of data equally whereas something like weather is
> going to be concentrated in predictable area's of the full range.
Yes, a commenter on my weblog pointed out that the way I am using
randomness will tend to statistically converge towards the middle of
the range, which explains some of how the shapes and colours look.
> Personally, I think it's really interesting to see what happens
> with different types of data. If you experiment with different data
> sources, I think you'll find that they each have their own
> significant character which could in turn be interesting to mix
> together.
I do like the idea of using different data sources. I have another
project called paintr ( http://paintr.robmyers.org/ ) that uses
colr.org and flickr.com for source material. draw-something is
intended as a self-contained system, but there are different ways of
generating numbers for it to use.
- Rob.
draw-something
I have been working on my program draw-something.
There's a Flash version (made with MTASC):
http://draw-something.robmyers.org/
And the Lisp version now makes multiple figures and coloured figures:
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/11/purely-random-colour/
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/08/draw-something-drawing/
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/08/a-change-of-algorithm-for-
draw-something/
Source for all versions available from sourceforge CVS along with
some recent release bundles:
http:://rob-art.sourceforge.net/
- Rob.
There's a Flash version (made with MTASC):
http://draw-something.robmyers.org/
And the Lisp version now makes multiple figures and coloured figures:
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/11/purely-random-colour/
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/08/draw-something-drawing/
http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/01/08/a-change-of-algorithm-for-
draw-something/
Source for all versions available from sourceforge CVS along with
some recent release bundles:
http:://rob-art.sourceforge.net/
- Rob.
Re: -empyre- in jan06: Computational Poetics
On 1 Jan 2006, at 23:23, Komninos Zervos wrote:
> a few terms requiring further definition
I'm sorry, I didn't understand a word of that sentence.
- Rob.
> a few terms requiring further definition
I'm sorry, I didn't understand a word of that sentence.
- Rob.