Rob Myers
Since 2003
Works in United States of America

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.
Discussions (509) Opportunities (1) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Regarding The


In this scenario the paradigmatic artist is Road Runner. Or possibly
the Mynah Bird.

- Rob.

On 10 Aug 2005, at 19:19, curt cloninger wrote:

> Or, "the rabid coyotes encroach as the caravan is forced to circle
> the wagons and chase its own tail in a self-referential ouroboros/
> mobius strip of rapidly decreasing relevance.

DISCUSSION

paintr


paintr is now available to view online:
http://paintr.robmyers.org/

The source code is also available under the GPL:

http://paintr.robmyers.org/paintr_0.1.tar.gz

The source code for the full-screen application that I used to show
paintr at O3one is not yet available. I need to rewrite it a bit for
public consumption.

Paintr was inspired by the writing of Harold Cohen and the projects
of Pall Thayer. It is written in PHP, and uses several web services
to gather and process aesthetic materials in order to create an
analogue to art or artistic activity:

* colr
* flickr
* autotrace

All the images from flickr used by paintr are licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, and are therefore
free to be used in this manner.

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

Re: Conceptual Art


On 9 Aug 2005, at 11:48, Geert Dekkers wrote:
> On 9-aug-2005, at 12:13, Jim Andrews wrote:
>> "if anyone can make [a thing] with the tap of their finger", then
>> it's value
>> as an artistic form decreases. it becomes a cliche. it becomes
>> like a letter
>> in the alphabet. neither the concept nor the technique can easily be
>> distinguished amid a sea of similar objects. there will be a few
>> that stand
>> out, but not so much by virtue of the concept or technique as by
>> other
>> things such as whether the author has a television show etc.
>
> But why be so concerned about the amount of time something takes to
> make, or the amount of effort?

Indeed. If there were an infinite number of art objects, or if
everything was art, some objects would still be better than others.
What would make them better?

Competence is a better guide than effort. This was the point of
Whistler's lawsuit against Ruskin.

And sincerity or going for the aura doesn't help. Being all serious
and portentious doesn't make bad work good, it just makes is mawkish
and embarrassing. See Jake & Dinos Chapman. Or Adrian Mole.

> To me, that just doesn't seem to be the point. A value is measured
> -- if I may say so bluntly -- in the resonance a thing makes in a
> community. How much it is talked about. Not how much it is talked
> about NOW, because we'd be at the mercy of the man with the most
> air-time, I absolutely agree with you there. Not how much it is
> talked about among consumers -- if this group could ever be
> defined -- I mean the group of consumers consisting of those who
> stay consumers, never become producers. The resonance is what
> influences new production. Sometime, somewhere. Now how would we
> ever measure THAT?

But what causes that resonance, and what gives it that influence?
Please not the Institutional Theory. Are we back at quality?

Art is perceptual, it is contemplative. Concepts may be contemplated.
Concepts may be objects of aesthetic regard. Therefore conceptual art
is possible.

The conceptual art of 1968-72 or so was one of the answers to a more
general crisis of representation. But the neo-conceptual and
relational art we have to put up with now is not conceptual in any
useful sense, and is not an answer to any interesting questions.

It is simply the wallpaper of managerial culture.

- Rob.

DISCUSSION

HOWTO Writeup


In the second half of 2004 I began exchanging emails with a pair of
artists called MANIK (MArija Vauda & NIKola Pipilovic). We had met on
the New-York-based Rhizome mailing list. I live in Peterborough in
England. Manik live in Belgrade in Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia). The
Internet dissolved that distance, allowing us to discuss art,
aesthetics, and occasionally old television comedy programs.

Early in 2005 MANIK suggested that I have a show of my work in
Belgrade, and began working to find a suitable gallery. The gallery
that eventually agreed to show my work, O3one, specialises in new
media art, and had exactly the kind of space and technology that I
needed. With the show confirmed for the end of July, The British
Council agreed to pay for me to travel to Belgrade.

In Belgrade I stayed with MANIK (who were the perfect hosts) for a
week to set up the show, attend the private view and give a talk.
Setting up the show went quickly and smoothly, although I had to do
some last minute hacking to ensure the software part of the show
would run well unattended.

The work I showed was:

Canto - http://www.robmyers.org/art/canto
1969 - http://www.robmyers.org/art/1969
draw-something - http://rob-art.sourceforge.net/
paintr - http://paintr.robmyers.org/

At the private view people liked the work and some had interesting
questions. The talk two days later - about my work, free software and
free culture - also went well. I chatted to a couple of other artists
before and after.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was giving interviews to radio and
television (a music TV channel called Metropolis, and a national TV
arts program). That and the heat of Belgrade's summer were the only
two real surprises I had.

Whilst in Belgrade I had enough time to see MANIK's work and talk art
with them in real life, to see some of the city, to visit some of
MANIK's artist friends, and to look around some of the city's
galleries and museums. Like Jack White I had to see the Nikola Tesla
Museum.

This experience has confirmed my belief in the potential of
collaboration over the internet, and driven home the importance of
real world, international, collaboration between artists.

Show photos - http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2005/08/02/rob-myers-
howto-images/

My web site - http://www.robmyers.org/
MANIK's weblog - http://tiija.blogspot.com/
O3one - http://www.o3.co.yu/
Rhizome - http://www.rhizome.org/
British Council http://www.britishcouncil.org/
Remix Reading - http://www.remixreading.org/
Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5509

DISCUSSION

Re: Notes for a Liberated Computer Language


On 20 Jul 2005, at 17:06, Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker wrote:

> backdoor TARGET.
> Installs a backdoor in the machine specified in TARGET. If no
> target is
> provided, the backdoor is installed in the local machine.

XS kewl. Send this to Lambda The Ultimate to see what the language
lawyers make of it. :-)

I notice that the language of this language is conventional. That is,
the terminology used reflects conventional values. Backdoor should
surely be "liberate" or "improve" or something?

It is also not Turing complete (its status as a declarative language
needn't affect this), which is possibly more constraining than
liberating?

- Rob.